BBC World Service: Eastern Europe

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Rawlings, and at her request, I beg leave to ask Government the following Question:
	What discussions they have had with the BBC regarding the proposed cuts to BBC World Service broadcasts in eastern Europe.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, the FCO was consulted, and the Foreign Secretary fully supports the proposed changes. The changes announced on 25 October reflect the World Service's strategy and vision for the future. They are part of a necessary and timely reprioritisation that will also introduce new online and TV services in line with growing audience demand. The World Service believes that the changes will lead to an increase in its global audience and impact.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that we on this side of the House broadly agree with the underlying thinking on this change, particularly as the centre of gravity of the world economy is shifting eastwards and the Middle East and Asia are the rising areas? At the same time, would she accept that there are always bound to be one or two difficult decisions at the margins? One of them relates to Bulgaria, which I know my noble friend Lady Rawlings had particularly in mind, but it could be applied generally to south-eastern Europe, where there are still many delicate relationships and an urgent need for good and clear information of the kind that the BBC World Service provides. Will she examine the particular issue of World Service links to Bulgaria, which I believe have also been cut, and look at some of the south-eastern European issues where a little adjustment might save a lot of trouble and ill feeling?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, the Government welcome the support of the noble Lords opposite. In respect of Bulgaria, it is correct that the vernacular service is going to be cut. That is for two reasons. First, it has a very small reach and impact. A lot of research has been done into that. Secondly, Bulgaria is on the road to becoming a member of the European Union and its citizens have access to free and fair information. Therefore, the vernacular service is no longer necessary because Bulgaria is a free and open democracy.

Lord Sheldon: My Lords, the BBC World Service has broadcast to eastern Europe since the early 1930s. We supported democratic forces in those communist countries. Why should we be turning our back on their, and our, success?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, we are not turning our back on those countries or on our success. The BBC World Service's contribution in the past to building peace and democracy in central and eastern Europe is widely understood and appreciated, but the world moves on. Those countries are now our partners in the European Union. Just as in the past the BBC World Service stopped broadcasting in French, German and Italian, so now those countries are part of the European Union and they are being treated on a par with other large countries.

Baroness Knight of Collingtree: My Lords, if this matter has been prioritised previously, which the noble Baroness implied, what caused it to be deprioritised in order to be reprioritised now?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I think I may have my priorities somewhat mixed here. If I understand the noble Baroness's question well, those countries were priorities in the past because they were in need of access to free and fair information. That is the excellent service that the BBC World Service provides. Now people living in countries in central and eastern Europe have access to the Internet and have a free press in their own countries. The BBC World Service wants to concentrate its efforts on other parts of the world where people are still in need of free and fair information, which they do not receive from their indigenous press.

Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the BBC World Service is gaining increasing support on the Internet? I hope that that will apply to the areas covered by the Question. Is she aware that the chimes of Big Ben are transmitted over the Internet and are inaccurate to the extent of several seconds? That may not be of great interest to a number of noble Lords, but the BBC is synonymous with accuracy and truthfulness, and to a great many people the sounds of Big Ben across the world have meant a great deal. Would it not be possible for the BBC to link up with NTP, the Network Time Protocol, or DRM, the Digital Radio Mondiale, to achieve better accuracy for the rather wonky pips?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I was unaware that the chimes of Big Ben are wonky when broadcast to some parts of the world. I shall certainly pursue the issue with the World Service. If it can make amends or improve Big Ben's clarity, I am sure it will do so.

Lord McNally: My Lords, while these Benches support this reprioritisation, we are a little concerned that it was forced on the World Service by government limitations on its expenditure. Can we be assured that political judgment on whether broadcasting goes ahead is paramount in this matter? The BBC World Service is still the jewel in our crown as regards representation around the world. Television in the Arabic language is probably 20 years overdue and should be warmly welcomed, but we should also appreciate that not only the sound of Big Ben, but also the sound of "Lilly Bolero" means freedom to millions around the world.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I am also an aficionado of "Lilly Bolero" and I, like the Government, believe that the BBC World Service is the jewel in our crown. I assure the noble Lord that it was an independent decision taken by the BBC World Service and it was certainly not a matter of cost-cutting. Over the past two spending rounds, the money made available to the BBC World Service has increased. It has received £239 million this year and it will receive £245 million next year.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, the Minister said that the world moves on, but in some countries it is moving backwards. In Russia, for instance, there is already more and more pressure on the free media. Television stations are not free and a lot of newspapers are being closed down. Russia needs the BBC World Service as much now as it ever did. I hope that some consideration will be given to that.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, when I said that the world moves on, I did not mean to imply that every country in the world was democratic or as free as we would wish. I understand that there is still a very lively vernacular service in Russian and I am sure that that will continue. That is important not only to Russia, but to the Russian-speaking countries of this world.

Gulf War Syndrome

Lord Morris of Manchester: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What action they are taking in regard to the implications for other veterans of the 1990–91 Gulf War of the Pensions Appeal Tribunal decision of 31 October in the case of Guardsman Daniel Martin.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, my honourable friend the Minister for Veterans has issued a Statement this morning which welcomes the Pensions Appeal Tribunal decision to accept "Gulf War syndrome" as an umbrella term for ill health caused by service and connected with the 1990–91 Gulf War. We hope that that will address the concerns of Gulf veterans on this issue. The Government also welcome the decision which found that there is no reliable evidence to show that Gulf War syndrome is a discrete medical condition.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. Now that the veterans and bereaved families are so totally vindicated by this humane and landmark judgment linking Gulf War illnesses to a conflict-related syndrome, is it not deeply disquieting that the president of the Pensions Appeal Tribunal found it,
	"highly regrettable that there was such a delay in the Ministry of Defence accepting this"?
	Is it not now imperative, 15 years on from the conflict, to review very urgently every case that could be affected by the judgment and bring closure to this whole sad story, in keeping with the scrupulously fair and widely acclaimed recommendations of the Lloyd report, the case for which is now movingly reinforced by a plea to the Prime Minister from the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Norwich and Oxford and other distinguished Church leaders?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we certainly regard the position established by the tribunal as a step forward which enables us to make progress on the matter. There are a relatively small number of cases to be considered on appeal. There may be additional cases which did not appeal to which we can now address our attention. I think that my noble friend will recognise that the problems over the years were reflected in the tribunal judgment; because it was always the contention that Gulf War syndrome was a discrete medical illness. The tribunal indicated that that is not so. But the tribunal's judgment gives us a chance to move forward.

The Countess of Mar: My Lords, does the noble Lord recall that in 1997 his right honourable friend Dr John Reid, when he was Minister for the Armed Forces, said that the British Government would "shadow" the American Government in their decisions on Gulf War syndrome? The Americans, many years ago, decided that there was a Gulf War syndrome, yet the British Government are still failing to accept that there is—although in my dealings with the Government I have always spoken about "Gulf War illnesses". Why have the Government failed to shadow the Americans? Will these Gulf War veterans who are waiting to have their medical tribunals heard have to go through the tribunal system with all the stresses and strains that that involves? Some of these men are very sick. Will the Government accept their illness and pay the pensions?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I think that the noble Countess will be well aware that the Government have been paying pensions and making payments to a very large number of ill Gulf veterans over the intervening years. The issue revolved around the question of the discrete medical condition. Although the noble Countess attests to the fact that the Americans changed their position, there were other allies in the Gulf to whom we also have some obligation who take broadly the position that we have taken. These are complex matters. The tribunal has given us the basis on which to go forward.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-president of the Royal British Legion, Women's Section. Does the Minister not think that his noble friend Lord Morris has fought long and hard for this and that no one cares what it is called? We want to see justice for these people and this Statement sounds helpful.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that statement. It was remiss of me not to speak in those terms of the work that my noble friend has done. I am glad she has given me the opportunity to do so. I was at that stage concentrating very much on the content of my noble friend's Question, as the House would expect me to do. We all recognise the significant role that he has played. This is a significant landmark. It is a step forward which the Government recognise.

Lord Tyler: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the Government appear to be giving a grudging acceptance to this decision after 15 years of wait on behalf of those who have suffered in the cause of their country's defence? Does the Minister not have some sense of shame that it has taken so long to catch up with the Americans? The Americans have been so much more sympathetic and generous to those who served their country in the Gulf. Is there no sense of shame in the Government about this long delay?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, as I indicated, illnesses related to the Gulf War have been treated fairly and properly in very many cases—several thousand. So it is not the case that the Government have been restrictive in those terms. However, on the particular issue where the claim referred to the medical condition of "Gulf War syndrome", the Government's position was vindicated by the tribunal. But the tribunal also clearly indicated that as a generic term this would be the basis on which the Government could sympathetically approach additional cases. Certainly those which are under appeal will be treated very soon. There may be a number of other cases—we do not think it is a very large number—which we will be able to process sympathetically.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, do the Government accept the view of the tribunal that diagnostic labelling is fundamental to the consideration of a claim? Do the Government accept the concession made by the Veterans Agency that GWS was the correct diagnostic label? Do the Government accept the view of the tribunal that if that concession had been made many years ago, many of the veterans would have been satisfied?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it is a question of medical terms. As the noble and learned Lord will recognise, the tribunal did not describe Gulf War syndrome as a discrete medical illness. That is the basis of the Government's position on the tribunal's judgment, and they will sustain that position. Nevertheless, I freely agree with the noble and learned Lord that the tribunal's decision enables us to go forward under the umbrella term, and we intend to go forward. That is the germane and important point that I make to the House and to the country.

NHS Complaints: Healthcare Commission

Baroness Tonge: My Lords, at the request of my noble friend Lady Neuberger and with her consent, I beg leave to ask the Government the following Question standing in her name on the Order Paper:
	What is their view of the recent finding that nearly a third of complaints to the Healthcare Commission are referred back to the National Health Service because the issue has not been dealt with adequately.

Lord Warner: My Lords, in its first year of operation, the Healthcare Commission received more than 8,000 requests for independent review, which was three times the level of requests under the previous system. One fifth of those requests were outside the commission's jurisdiction and no attempt at a local resolution had been made in half of those requests. I understand from the Healthcare Commission that 32 per cent of cases are now referred back to the NHS for further action. This enables more cases to be resolved satisfactorily locally, and quicker. I understand that 90 per cent of those cases which are referred back to the NHS are then resolved at local level, giving the right outcome for patients and supporting learning for the organisation concerned. This is very much in line with the approach in the NHS Redress Bill which is currently before the House.

Baroness Tonge: My Lords, in light of that rather depressing view of how NHS trusts are able to deal with complaints, how confident can the Minister be that trusts will be able to deal with the investigation of complaints and the financial compensation under the new NHS redress scheme? Would it not be much more efficient and reassuring for the general public if the overseeing authority, at least for the investigation of complaints, could be the much respected Healthcare Commission?

Lord Warner: My Lords, this is a success story, believe it or not. This is a result of this Government putting in place a sound basis for a second tier for complaints. The Healthcare Commission is respected. As I said in my Answer, it is producing far more requests for intervention but, as I also said, the referral back shows that 90 per cent of those cases are satisfactorily resolved for patients at the local level. That shows that the NHS is learning and getting better at handling complaints. That should be celebrated in this House. The fact that patients are able to come forward and have these matters dealt with satisfactorily is a tribute to the NHS's ability to change its culture.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the Minister said that half the complaints that went to the commission had not been dealt with at local level; in other words, the local level is passing back its buck. It appears that the complaints are then going back to the local level and being settled. What on earth is going on?

Lord Warner: My Lords, we introduced a new system in the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, in which we put the responsibility very clearly on the Healthcare Commission—and as I recall the noble Lord was part of the team on his Benches discussing that legislation. The commission has accepted a lot of requests—a fifth of them—when it did not have any jurisdiction, so it had to deal with them, and a proportion of them had to be settled locally. That proportion is now about one-third, which is being dealt with satisfactorily at the local level, with a good deal of help, support and learning from the Healthcare Commission, which is making the local systems more effective.

Lord Chan: My Lords, while it is encouraging to hear that patients and the community are willing to put their complaints forward to the Healthcare Commission, what arrangements do primary care trusts and hospital trusts make to make the process of local resolution clear to all patients? There are means at every level—for example, when patients are given assistance and advice. Is that advice being made available to patients? Also, how strong is public and community participation in the care of patients in terms of trusts? What is the process and to what extent does the Department of Health encourage a more open policy with patients?

Lord Warner: My Lords, a good deal of work has gone into improving the process at local level. We now have, as a result of the 2003 changes, patient advice and liaison services—or PALS—which are playing a big part in advising people and helping them to address their concerns on the spot at the local level. Trusts are being more outward going. There is a cultural change of less defensiveness, which shows up here in the sense that people are resolving these complaints at local level. It demonstrates that the Healthcare Commission itself is encouraging that local resolution.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I welcome the work of PALS and the work that the health service is doing in the community to listen to the community, rather than just looking at complaints. We know of one group of patients that does not make complaints; that is, children. What is the health service doing to ensure that the difficulties that children face are heard when they do not make complaints directly?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the thing about PALS and other support services is that they enable the voice of children to be heard better. I would not want to claim that we have a perfect situation; we need to carry on working hard in that area. But we are seeing an NHS that is becoming much more responsive to addressing and redressing concerns when things go wrong, and learning from those experiences, and I believe that it will continue to develop in that area.

Local Government

Lord Waddington: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they are considering plans to introduce unitary local authorities in place of existing county and district councils; and whether they still propose to introduce elected regional assemblies.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, a wide-ranging debate is taking place in local government about its future role and functions. We are listening to that debate with interest. Ministers have taken no decisions about whether there should be any reorganisation of the two-tier structure.
	There are no proposals to introduce elected regional assemblies. We said after the outcome of the north-east referendum that the Government would not be proceeding with further referendums to establish elected regional assemblies.

Lord Waddington: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, but is it not plain that having been thwarted in their plans for elected regional assemblies, the Government are at it again? They are plotting, are they not, to put responsibility for more and more public services, from planning to policing and many other public services, at regional level as remote from the people as possible? As to this talk of changes in local government and the introduction of unitary authorities, is it not obvious that whether you have unitary authorities covering the county areas or you merge districts with no counties, local government will be more remote from the people that it is supposed to serve and therefore less democratic?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, the noble Lord is being very creative. I can assure him that we are not plotting to do anything. We are being extremely open in all our discussions about how to deliver better services at regional and local levels, and we are taking into our confidence, and working very closely with, all forms of local government.
	With regard to the regional level of government, there is a range of issues that can be dealt with only at regional strategic level. They include planning at a spatial level and housing. Regarding what the noble Lord said about unitary authorities, the essential thing is that each level of government should be fit for purpose, which is why in 2004 we began a debate called "Local Vision" to look at issues such as better leadership, better performance, how to connect with local authorities and get people into those authorities to raise the standard and deliver better services.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the current two-tier structure of local government, which splits, for example, housing from social services, means that some of the most vulnerable people in our society do not know who does what, who pays for what and who is accountable for what? That cannot be good for local democracy. Does she further agree, given that the majority of local revenues now come from government since the nationalisation of the business rate, and given that most local authorities have now developed purchaser-provider splits of service, that in any possible reorganisation of unitary authorities, it should not be population numbers that count, as they are now less important, but the concept of the local community?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, my noble friend speaks from a lifetime of experience in local government. As we look at how we can match services to needs, we will listen closely to those views.
	She is right that size is not a determinant, because we have large and very successful unitary authorities. She is also right that splitting services such as social services and housing means that people fall through the net. Equally, when waste collection and planning are split between authorities, there is duplication of purpose. The Government's mind is genuinely open about these things, however, and we have taken no decisions.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as a member of a district council in a two-tier area. I am therefore one of the people the Minister assures me she is not trying to abolish at the moment but might try to abolish in the future.
	Following on from what the noble Baroness has just asked, will the Minister deny that one of the intentions of the Government—as set out in the recent Daily Telegraph article—is to reduce the number of councillors as part of the increase in size of local authorities? Is it not the case that if there are fewer councillors, there will be fewer citizens of this country directly involved in local government, and that the relationship between councillors, electors and citizens will inevitably be more remote and less intimate? Is that not a bad thing?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that we have no intention of abolishing him. This is not a question of abolition, or indeed numbers; it is about quality. The debate we should be having is this: how do we re-energise local government? How do we get the best people into it? How do we ensure transparency and accountability? That is something his party, my party and the Conservative Party are concerned about. We might usefully have a lot of discussion around that issue.

Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, will the Minister assure us that the Government will take into due account that there was a referendum in the northern region where a substantial majority of people requested that we keep our two famous county councils and 18 district councils?

Baroness Andrews: Yes, my Lords, I have listened carefully to what the noble Lord has just said.

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan: My Lords, does my noble friend remember that it was the introduction of single-tier local government in Scotland that removed one of the biggest obstacles to the proposition of Scottish devolution? If there is going to be regional devolution, it will have to be on the basis of less government, not more. To do that, we need to get rid of some of the tiers of local government and make the whole system that much simpler. It was inadvertent on the part of the Conservative government that they did so, but they should be given credit for the massive obstacle they removed on the road to devolution in Scotland.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, it is worth reflecting that the only two reorganisations we have had, in 1974 and the 1990s, came from the Conservatives. However, I take the point made by my noble friend.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, will the Miliband review be considered alongside the Sir Michael Lyons review? Will it be external to the Sir Michael Lyons review and, if so, who will report and when?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, there is no Miliband review. If I may take the noble Baroness through the logic of this, in 2004 we began a debate on a wide-ranging set of issues in local government. That continues and has been very productive in the way we think about leadership and performance management. When we announced it in September, it seemed to us eminently sensible that since Sir Michael was looking at the future funding of local government, it was difficult for him to do so without looking at form and function. He is not looking at structures; neither are we. We are looking at outcomes and whether the structures are fit for purpose. His review was extended in that way. Obviously, it is very important from a strategic point of view that what we do in local government and what he is considering come close together and are co-ordinated. We fully intend to do that. Next summer we shall bring together the strands of our debate across local government and make proposals. It is very important that there is co-ordination, and there will be.

Universities: Bureaucracy

Lord Norton of Louth: rose to call attention to the impact of bureaucracy on universities; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, I declare an interest as a professor and head of a department at Hull University. I also note with pleasure that two of the speakers in the debate are graduates of the university.
	This is not the first time that I have drawn attention to the impact of bureaucracy on universities. I did so in another balloted debate four years ago. On that occasion I drew attention to the burden of bureaucracy and the need for a light touch, as distinct from the lighter touch that had been promised. I very much welcome the fact that since that time there has been a lightening of the burden in some areas. However, the impact of bureaucracy remains, notably in its range, opportunity cost and how it is perceived by those who work in our universities.
	The problem of bureaucracy in higher education derives from a plethora of bodies, known by a bewildering array of acronyms, and how they operate. We have HEFCE, the QAA, OFFA, the RAE, the HE Academy and, for research grants, the ESRC and other funding councils. The list is by no means exhaustive. The real burden of bureaucracy derives from their existence as discrete entities and their collective impact. They operate in a way that may be effective for their particular purposes, but not one that is efficient. Indeed, this has been conceded in the case of the QAA, leading to a significant change in the way in which the inspection regime operates.
	The way in which these bodies operate as distinct entities not only generates a substantial collective burden but also builds in overlaps, the same data being required in different forms, as well as potential conflicts. The demands of one body may not always be compatible with those of another. They engage in a wide range of data gathering and the generation of regulations and guidance. As the Minister will be aware, students lost interest in Trotsky many years ago, but the concept of perpetual revolution appears to live on among those who run our education system. There is no steady state. The regulations and rules governing data collection appear to change with amazing regularity. It is difficult to keep up.
	Regulation imposes a significant cost. The cost can be identified in money, morale and enterprise. I shall take each in turn. The total cost impact on institutions of higher education was estimated by PA Consulting in 2000 to amount to about £250 million. I drew attention to that figure in the debate in 2001. Changes since then, especially in the QAA regime, have produced a reduction, and the equivalent cost in 2004 was estimated at £211 million. This is welcome, but it does not go far enough. It is a lighter load, but still not a light one. As PA Consulting noted, the cost is equivalent to the annual income of two large universities.
	Furthermore, the reduction in regulation has been offset by an increase of almost 60 per cent in regulation from other organisations and activities over the same period. The burden is excessive in relation to need. Universities UK, drawing on the work of the Better Regulation Task Force, has argued that higher education is a "low risk" sector in terms of accountability, and that the regulatory burden should reflect that fact. The cost is not only excessive but greater than the estimate suggests. There is the opportunity cost—the resources could be put to much more productive use—and there is the impact on recruitment and retention. The cost to universities is not only a regulatory burden but also in academic seepage.
	That brings me to the cost in terms of morale. It is this which I wish to stress. The impact of regulation has to be put in the wider context of what is happening in our universities. Long gone are the days of academics having plenty of time to indulge in reflective research, take long holidays and be deemed low risk by insurance companies for actuarial purposes. As I argued in the previous debate, academics are underpaid, under-resourced and undervalued. Factor in a soul-destroying regulatory burden and you have the basis for a crisis in higher education. Academic pay has declined relative to that of comparable professional groups. It is estimated that within the past 20 years academic salaries have declined by 40 per cent compared with similar professions.
	Student numbers have increased markedly in recent years but they have not been matched by a proportionate increase in the number of academic staff. The staff/student ratio in higher education has increased from 1:9 in 1980 to 1:21 in 2004. Over the past four years, according to figures calculated by the AUT, the ratio has been higher in universities than it has been in schools. The 2004 figure of 1:21 compares to a ratio across all UK schools of 1:19. Universities in this country are also in a worse position than universities in competitor OECD countries. And it is not just a case of there being more students but also more paperwork per student. What one might term the unit cost of paperwork has increased, paper trails now being all important.
	In short, academics are expected to do more for less. They work long hours—the end of a semester does not mean the end of long working days—and they do so for relatively little reward. Why bother? There are better pay and opportunities elsewhere, with the result that it is proving increasingly difficult to recruit staff and to retain them. If we were not able to recruit staff from abroad—40 per cent of new lecturers now come from overseas—we would not be able to cope. One study last year found that in the preceding year 56 per cent of women and 44 per cent of men seriously considered leaving the academic profession. Workload pressures are having an effect on the health of those who have to carry an increasing burden. PA Consulting conceded that such behavioural costs are not quantifiable, but nevertheless represent "real" costs to the institutions.
	Our universities now survive largely on the good will of academics and it is proving increasingly difficult to maintain that good will. The figures I have just cited show how fragile the situation is.
	The third cost is in terms of enterprise. My fear is that the extent of regulation has a dulling effect on innovation and exploration. Regulation is in danger of generating greater uniformity as administrators and academics decide to play safe. I notice that a Written Answer in the other place last week revealed that, in 2004, universities received 1,573 pages of documents from HEFCE. Trying to keep up with all the material is a major exercise in itself, but my principal concern is with what all the documents require of universities. Rather than risk their funding, universities comply with what is expected of them, even if the requirements are burdensome and the methodology, at times, questionable.
	There is also the impact on academic research. I draw on the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, who has to be in a laboratory today and regrets she is unable to be with us. In an article in the latest issue of the AUT magazine, autLOOK, she writes,
	"Many academics no longer feel they can do long-term research, or take risks by engaging in certain projects that may not garner RAE points through safe publications. They might well opt instead for short-term projects that translate more quickly into print. Research geared to publication is fine, it shows the worth of your work, but it doesn't necessarily shift paradigms".
	The regulatory burden is not only onerous; it has a chilling effect on innovation and individuality. That has significant implications, not only for the recruitment and retention of staff, but also for our international competitiveness.
	The problem is serious. The regulatory burden must be put in context. The problems faced by higher education have to be addressed holistically. Some reduction in the regulatory burden is necessary but not sufficient if we are to restore our universities to a position where they can compete with those in comparable countries.
	What, then, has been done to address the issue? The problem of regulation has certainly been recognised with the creation of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group. It has recommended a concordat between the many regulators, to streamline quality assurance and data collection, as well as recommending more focused consultations. Universities UK, as the Minister knows, has recommended the adoption of various principles to govern regulation, working within the framework of institutional autonomy proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. The recommendations of Universities UK—especially those geared to what has been termed a "dipstick" approach—are designed to reduce the inefficiencies of the existing regime. As I said in opening, effectiveness is not synonymous with efficiency.
	The good news, then, is that there is recognition of the problem, and that some steps have been taken to address it. We have seen some practical changes, primarily in respect of the QAA, but much rests on the extent to which the recommendations I referred to are implemented. That implementation must constitute phase one of several designed to address the impact of bureaucracy on our universities, and form part of the wider response to the problems I have delineated.
	I therefore look to the Minister, in replying, to explain the Government's intentions to bring that about. Making clear that the work of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group will continue would be a welcome indication of intent, but we need to go way beyond that. Next year will provide new opportunities for universities in terms of funding. We need to ensure that the opportunity is not lost to address the fundamental issues that face universities and—the aspect I have sought to address—those who work within them.
	It will be helpful to hear from the Minister what the Government plan to do to help reduce the regulatory burden on universities, and what incentives they wish to build into the system to ensure that we can recruit and retain the academics we need for our universities to remain at—or, rather, be restored to—the cutting edge of teaching and research. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Giddens: My Lords, let me start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on initiating a debate on a topic so important to education in this country. I have to own up, with some pride, to being one of the graduates of the University of Hull to whom he referred. I state an elliptical interest, in so far as I was the director of the London School of Economics for a considerable period, and I still sustain some close connections with that much-loved organisation. At least it is much-loved by me—that might not apply to everyone else in the Chamber.
	When one says "three cheers" for something, it is normally done at the end of an occasion, but I should like to do it this time at the beginning of my speech. First, let us hear it for universities in general. Vice-chancellors tend to be reserved and shy people—that is a joke, by the way—so they are not always best at propagating the importance of universities in our society, but it should be much more widely known. Universities are much more central to our society today than they were 20 or 30 years ago. That is partly for economic reasons. In the British economy today, only 12 per cent of the labour force work in manufacture, and less than 2 per cent of the labour force work in agriculture. That means that well over 80 per cent of the working population work in symbolic occupations or service occupations that demand a knowledge base. Universities are also important for their contribution to civility. We live in an increasingly cosmopolitan society, and universities can play a key role in fostering a more cosmopolitan spirit in our population as university expansion and higher education expansion continue.
	Secondly, let us hear it for British universities. I agree with quite a lot of what the noble Lord said, but British universities have some remarkable achievements to their credit. When one reads the press, one thinks that there is all this trouble between British universities and other organisations and that they have not reformed themselves. That is not true. Most British universities have become much more dynamic than they were before. They have improved their systems of governance, and have much closer connections with business and the outside world than they had 20 or so years ago. I hesitate to give the example of the LSE, but when I got there the governance institution was made up of 100 people who formed the court of governance. That was not the most dynamic way to run an institution that has to deal with rapid changes, but we reformed that, and we now have a council of just over 20 people who supply much more dynamic direction to the university, and that has happened with most universities in the country. Moreover, if you look at the 50 top-performing universities in the world according to the Shanghai indices and other indices of the attainment of the elite universities around the world, you will see that the UK is the only country with a substantial number of universities in the top 50 apart from the United States. So why should we not say that British universities, whatever their problems, are pretty much a success story internationally?
	Thirdly, which might be a bit more difficult, especially for the Benches opposite, what about a cheer for the Government? There are always going to be stresses and strains between any government and the university sector. Everyone in universities is always going to think that they do not get enough money from the government. In my opinion, this Government have changed the whole climate for universities from that which pertained under previous Conservative governments. They have put a lot more state money into universities. You can see that visibly in the improvements that campuses have made in many of their buildings; it is a very visible form of improvement. The Government have given large-scale support to science and technology, recognising that universities are at the cutting edge of dynamism in our society because they are at the cutting edge of technological and scientific innovation. Everyone will say that it is not enough money, but there have been significant sums that have made a substantial difference.
	The Government took the right course—although it was not very popular among certain sectors of the university population—in asking students to contribute to the cost of their education, on the basis that that education supplies advantages that subsequently reap rewards in life for those who have studied at university. If you look at the difference between British universities and continental universities, continental universities mostly have not been able to take that step, and they are massively overcrowded. British universities are largely in a far better state than most universities in continental countries. Take La Sapienza in Rome where there are 120,000 students. I will bet that of that figure, 100,000 have never even seen a professor. Even in American universities undergraduates will hardly ever meet a professor. But in British universities they do, and our universities therefore have a lot to commend them. The point of the reforms that the Government made, and the reason—that I supported strongly—that they were not funded from general taxation, was that the revenue goes to universities. It therefore increases the autonomy of universities, as such a system of financing should.
	Higher education is expanding across the world. There is a marked expansion of higher education in all the industrial countries, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I fully support the Government's target of getting 50 per cent of the relevant population into universities as soon as possible. Several other countries have already surpassed this target. Look at what is happening in India and China, where they are making massive investments in higher education. They are no longer competing on low-grade goods; they are already competing on high-grade ones, including informational goods provided by highly trained university graduates who are working at a fraction of the wage paid in western countries. It is a significant challenge, to which the UK must respond by continuing to invest further in higher education. As higher education expands, all countries face problems of the relationship between autonomy, funding and regulation. Every country has to try and find an appropriate balance for this.
	Everyone loves regulation. Many people want to see more regulation but they only want to see it for other people; they do not want to see it for themselves. I have listened to a lot of lectures by university professors who want more regulation for business, medicine and advertising. But if you suggest that they should have more regulation—just like people in business—they always say, "Well, we don't need to be regulated, we want to be autonomous".
	One can infer from this that regulation probably only does some good when people do not like it. In other words, it must chafe a bit if it is going to work and the very fact that it chafes gives some indication that it is working. This is what has happened in British universities. When the RAE and the QAA were introduced they were not very popular. They are still not very popular with the majority of academic staff but it would be difficult to deny that their effects have in some part been beneficial.
	I should not say this, but I used to teach at a provincial university in the centre of the country which shall remain unnamed. It was not Hull, which is not in the centre of the country. Some people here might remember Lucky Jim. Lucky Jim was not so far off the mark in the university in which I worked. I hope that no one is able to identify it. We used to get in for coffee at about a quarter to 11 in the morning and then we would sit around in the common room, waiting for the time for lunch. Then we would go and teach a couple of students until teatime. There would be an extended teatime in the senior common room and then many people would simply go off home again. You could not get away with that today and that is partly because of the impact of these regulatory regimes.
	Look at the case of the LSE. It entered 97 per cent of its academic staff in the research assessment exercise. In other words, only 3 per cent are research-inactive. Several of them were not in fact research-inactive; we simply could not find a category in which to place them. It would be difficult to deny that these regulatory regimes, especially when they were introduced, positively affected the performance of and the standards of teaching in universities, whatever objections the people working in them might have had.
	There is obviously a point at which a regulatory regime simply destroys what it is set up to achieve. It can destroy the very values which it is supposed to foster. That happened in universities, even though these regimes had a good impact. They became so cumbersome and consumed so much time that they destroyed a good part of what universities exist for. I completely agree with the noble Lord on this issue. That was part of a general set of mistakes made by government in introducing very heavy regulatory regimes in the NHS, in education and elsewhere, and I am pleased that the Government have started to pull back fairly radically from those.
	In line with the tenor of the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, I think that there are things that we should support. First, we should welcome the fact that there has been this pull-back on the part of government and that there is an attempt to find a much more compatible regime for universities. Secondly, we should welcome the fact that the head of the QAA today stresses the so-called light touch. Certainly, since I started running a university, the QAA has altered its regime systematically. Initially it was awful but now it is much more effective.
	There is a funny thing called the dipstick approach. It may not be a better metaphor than "light touch" because, first, it sounds rather dark and oily and, secondly, you always put a dipstick in the same place, although I take it that that is not the point of the dipstick approach. If I were running Universities UK, which fortunately I am not, I would find a better metaphor.
	Thirdly, we should welcome the Higher Education Regulation Review Group, even though, as the noble Lord said, it sounds like something out of Kafka and an example of the very thing that it is supposed to put an end to. However, the group, chaired by Patricia Hodgson, has been extraordinarily effective. It has focused mainly on HEFCE rather than the other regulatory regimes. Today, many of the regulatory burdens on universities come from HEFCE as much as from the QAA or RAE, and that is where the Government should primarily be looking. What plans does the Minister have for further utilising, and indeed supporting, the work of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group?
	Finally, although the noble Lord did not introduce this subject in his opening speech, I want to make some concluding comments about privatisation in universities. Many people link an attack on bureaucracy and regulation in British universities with a programme of privatisation, suggesting that a swathe of British universities should be privatised—and they look to the United States in doing so. But there is a cautionary tale here as many people do not understand what is going on in American universities. First, virtually all universities in the United States, including the most elite and the richest, depend on state money for their revenue. Top universities get a great deal of revenue from very generous federal grants, without which they could not manage to survive.
	Secondly, the discussion in the United States on university education is interestingly different from that which takes place here, although it is one that I think we should be having here. It is about recovering the public purpose of universities. It is no good simply abandoning the state and being in hock to business. That causes just as much of a problem for the mission of a university as does being linked to the state. The ex-president of Harvard, Derek Bok, has just written an interesting book on this subject. He points out the problems for universities that come from too much of an attitude of privatisation and closeness to business.
	Thirdly, and finally, virtually no universities in this country could privatise—at least, in the short term. Two-thirds of universities in the United States are state universities. They all have looked at privatisation and virtually all of them have come to the conclusion that they could not privatise. They could not replace the large amount of money that they get from their local states. The same is true of the LSE. It could not privatise in the short term. It has an endowment of only £30 million, which generates nothing in terms of income. It still gets more than £20 million from government. I see the LSE as being like a privately funded public institution.
	That is why I say, in closing, that I would like the Government to consider what the public role of universities today should be. That role should cover some of the things that the Government are trying to do. One of the most disturbing things in the United States is the rapid fall in the proportion of students from poorer backgrounds who now enter higher education. We should be doing something about that here, and the Government are trying to do so. Universities do not like it but I think that the Government should continue in that regard, although I am not sure that it is enough. So finally I ask the Minister whether he is prepared to do more on this issue rather than less.

Baroness Deech: My Lords, I am pleased to have this first opportunity to express my gratitude to your Lordships for the kindness and courtesy of my reception here in my first few weeks, particularly to the Officers and Attendants of this House. This kind reception has deepened my consciousness of the privilege I have in addressing this House on higher education. I was educated in an age when the staff of universities were free to take a chance on someone whose A-levels were not so good; when they were not afraid to criticise and offer kind help, and had all the time in the world for me. I owe my position to that education—the education which I received and, in my turn, have given and administered, and now assess in my position as the first independent adjudicator for higher education. I hope that no one will say that that adds to the regulatory burden, because I have replaced the visitor.
	The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has drawn attention to the impact of bureaucracy, not whether it has an impact. That is incontrovertible: it is adverse and there has been an overreaction to it. There are two sources for this malaise. One is the lack of trust in higher education institutions and their lecturers, and the other is the legal and regulatory regime into which the courts have been brought. Some of the laws are specific to universities; others have had an accidental impact on them. The upshot is that professors are no longer trusted to make policy. The ethos of a lifetime of immersion in the profession seems to count for very little. Some £16 billion a year is spent on universities. Of course, taxpayers, students and parents expect a check that that is well spent. Only half of it, however, is public money. The check should never be so deep that it is at the expense of the young people about whom this is the concern.
	Less than half the income of some universities is actually public, but they are all held 100 per cent accountable. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, drew attention to the overlapping and parallel jurisdictions of the many quangos—and their acronyms that we have become used to—to which I might add, in recent years, the Office for Fair Access, the Adult Learning Inspectorate, the TTA, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the research councils, and so on. The cost was indeed calculated, for HEFCE, as some £250 million in 2000. It has dropped a little, as was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. Even now, however, the cost of regulation is enough to fund at least one university and many bursaries. It will cut into that extra tuition fee income, which the universities are going to get.
	The lack of trust is highly symptomatic of what is going on. In her esteemed 2002 Reith lectures, the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill of Bengarve, drew attention to the fact that every day the public is told of examples of untrustworthiness—of politicians, in schools, in hospitals and in companies. This has called forth an ever-greater response of more accountability, more human rights, and more transparency. Yet, in the end, as the noble Baroness said, you need trust, not a culture of suspicion. Education and its qualities could be destroyed. Professors are more examined against than examining. We seek never to uproot those institutions, even when they are very new, to check that they are meeting their targets. We end up stunting their growth and diverting them from their true purpose.
	The second problem is the raft of laws—some, as I said, unintended in their impact on universities. For example, there have been four major education Acts in the past few years, as well as the Freedom of Information Act, the Children Act, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act, the Race Relations (Amendment) Act and the Higher Education Act 2004.
	Your Lordships might single out the overreaction to the Data Protection Act. In my old university, each and every student is asked whether he or she will consent to having his or her name published on the list of degree results. That leads to flawed statistics because some of them refuse. That will make fraud a little easier.
	The Data Protection Act has also affected the quality of references because candidates and parents know that those references can be accessed by candidates once they are accepted. I imagine that even the most responsible of teachers and writers of references would fear the result if a parent were to see that the prediction of A-levels was anything less than perfect. Yet never more have we needed honest references in this age of proliferation of high grades at A-level.
	It is taken as axiomatic that higher education has to do with higher earning power in a lifetime. I beg to differ. I am unhappy that students see themselves as consumers with rights and contracts. At the heart of regulation lies the notion that education can be delivered—a word I dislike. Education is not a neat package that is measured, delivered and quantified. It is a participatory and continuing process. It is endless with no certainty of outcome. Good teaching is essential but how far will it get without the intelligent reception, participation and contribution of the student?
	Education—especially higher education—has often been likened to the package holiday and the prospectus. Students choose their university on the promise of a happy experience and wonderful buildings. When they get there they may find that the facilities are less than perfect and they have a grumble. That is the wrong analogy. It is more like the contract that you or I might make at the health club, if your Lordships join such things. The trainer and facilities are provided, but there is no guarantee that your Lordships will become fit and healthy, unless you go there every day making the maximum effort. In other words, education is not really quantifiable in the sense assumed by regulation.
	Indeed, it goes deeper than that. There is no consensus in modern Britain about what higher education is for and what its benefits are. It is not a question of simply training students to use skills in future employment. It involves those unquantifiable things, such as induction into citizenship, leadership and employment, instilling ambition and motivation, the ability to savour work and leisure, independence of thought, intelligence and intelligibility, having a stake in the future and control over one's destiny, and an intelligent interest in politics. Those things cannot be precisely measured and regulated. They are inherently unquantifiable; they are a moving target.
	British higher education has been a huge success internationally and in our economic situation. We now educate 43 per cent of school leavers compared with a few years ago. The outreach work carried out by universities is unsurpassed, as is their professional ethos. I call on Ministers to express their confidence in this magnificent story. That would do more to encourage non-traditional candidates to apply—far more than expressions of need for regulation, league tables and laws. Candidates need to hear expressed the nation's supreme confidence in its higher education institutions.
	I hope that your Lordships will express support for the continuation of a Higher Education Regulation Review Group under Dame Patricia Hodgson in the hope that it will prune back some of the laws and free up the basic principles, to ensure that honesty and fearless constructive criticism can prevail for the benefit of the students about whom this debate is taking place.

Lord Howarth of Newport: My Lords, it is my privilege to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to our debates and to congratulate her on her maiden speech. I was fortunate enough to hear her address the All-Party University Group a year or two ago, when she was elegant, funny and wise. I said to myself that if she made half as good a speech today as she did then, we were in for a treat. We have had a treat and we look forward to many more.
	The vice-chancellor of Cambridge pointed out in a recent address that the influence of government stretches back to the very beginnings of that university, almost 800 years ago. In the annual commemoration of the university's benefactors, she said:
	"The sonorous prose of the form of commemoration can be read as a long saga of government influence".
	If there has been anything like a golden age of university autonomy, I suppose it was in the 1960s and 1970s, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, suggested, when Westminster and Whitehall were willing to fund adequate salaries, rather generous levels of student support and the expansion of the university system on a kind of welfare state model, but did not otherwise interfere or ask much, and allowed universities to be what academics still dream about: independent creators and disseminators of knowledge and ideas.
	Those two decades were exceptional in the history of British universities. Why have things changed so much? Why, in particular, have universities become so beset by bureaucracy? The scale of the Government's engagement with universities has grown alongside the enormous increase in the size of the sector, and the Government's financial outlay. In 1981 there were still only 46 degree-granting institutions; today there are 132 higher education institutions funded by HEFCE and 170 further education colleges providing higher education. The Government's outlay on higher education in England is more than £7.5 billion. The Government certainly have a duty to seek value for all this money.
	We happen, probably unfortunately, to live in a time when audit has become a cult. A university is audited by internal and external auditors; if it is regarded as a "low-risk" institution, it will also be audited every five years by HEFCE. This audit, it is fair to note, is the new, improved "HEFCE-lite" version—an audit of procedures only, under HEFCE's new audit code of practice. If it is an institution at financial risk, it will be audited a lot more often and more thoroughly, which must be right. Audit by HEFCE is far from being the end of the story. A university medical school can expect to be audited by the Quality Assurance Agency, the NHS and assorted royal colleges, each with different procedures. A university education department will be audited separately by the QAA and Ofsted. If a university offers higher education in a further education college it will be audited by the QAA, Ofsted and the Adult Learning Inspectorate. Why, I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister, could the QAA not do the lot?
	The Government want a great many different things from universities. They want universities to educate, of course, to develop the potential of individual students; to remedy the effects of class division; to socialise young people and instil civic values; to promote technology transfer, economic productivity and regional development; to produce a trained and qualified workforce, fit to compete in a global economy; and to carry out research of foreseeable social and economic utility, as well as basic research. The Prime Minister has reportedly suggested that universities will be to the 21st century what coalmines were to the 19th—and nobody now suggests that they should not have been regulated. There is also an old-fashioned view, which happily the Government do not disown, that universities should preserve, develop and transmit our culture.
	Problems arise; these manifold purposes for universities are in tension. Moreover, since universities are, in principle, autonomous institutions, the state has no power to plan their activities so the state has, by fits and starts, developed a tortuous system of carrots and sticks to get the universities to do the things it wants them to do. When the Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration was published in 2003, it reported that HEFCE was running between 40 and 50 separate funding initiatives on behalf of various government departments.
	Lambert criticised the constant layering of new initiatives on top of old, often unco-ordinated across government departments and agencies. He also found that the financial margins of universities were so tight that they had no option but to chase every available pound of funding, but that with each new funding stream came new regulatory burdens.
	Are universities private bodies, public bodies or put-upon hybrids? They are regulated as though they are public bodies. An instance is the application of freedom of information legislation to them, necessitating the hiring of additional archivists and administrators. FoI legislation does not apply to housing associations, which might equally be regarded as public bodies. Why, therefore, does it apply to universities? The European Union regards universities as emanations of the state, so that, for example, under the procurement directive, if a university wants to appoint internal auditors, it must advertise Europe-wide, I am told, to obtain five quotes. The cost to a British university of protecting intellectual property in Europe is four or five times that in America.
	Our universities are also regulated as private bodies. New accounting standards that apply to plcs also apply to universities. Universities in Britain are batted between governmental dirigisme and market pressures. The Government impel universities towards a market model in some respects, but not in others. The 2003 White Paper spoke approvingly of HEFCE insisting that certain elements of annual grants should be tied to human resources strategies that reward good performance. The White Paper went on to say, somewhat brutally:
	"This process has successfully kick-started the modernisation of human resource management in higher education".
	This would seem to mean more procedures to measure what academics do, leading to wider differentials in pay. Whether this will prove divisive and demoralising, or rallying and invigorating, time will tell. On the other hand, the Government have denied universities the right to test the market in fees.
	It is striking that there is little evidence that the growth of public regulation has fortified the sense of public mission within universities. My noble friend Lord Giddens touched upon this. British universities seem increasingly to espouse an atomised concept of the public interest. Students are now largely perceived, both by themselves and by universities, as customers of a service industry.
	It is not only the DfES and its surrogates that regulate universities; the Department of Trade and Industry, via the Office of Science and Technology and the research councils, the Department of Health, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister via the regional development agencies all provide funds, purchase services, regulate and otherwise make claims on universities. Consultation documents from a plethora of departments, including the Treasury, rained down on universities in 2003 and 2004. The Government do not appear yet to have procedures to regulate their own regulatory incontinence.
	The problem is recognised by the DfES and HEFCE, which have committed themselves to minimising accountability burdens. The Orwellian-sounding Better Regulation Task Force made a useful study that led, among other benefits, to a less aggressive and burdensome modus operandi by the QAA. The Lambert review made sensible recommendations for differential and more proportionate regulation based upon risk assessment, so that not all institutions should be subjected to the regulatory treatment judged appropriate for the worst, and HEFCE has been pursuing this course. Following the débâcle of the last research assessment exercise, when the Government failed to fund the implications of the vast process that universities had undergone, the Roberts report put forward recommendations for a less labyrinthine and exhausting procedure in future RAEs. In recent years, letters of guidance from the Secretary of State to HEFCE have been less detailed and prescriptive. HEFCE has converted a number of bidding programmes into formula funding. Sir Martin Harris has allayed many fears and principled objections by forswearing bureaucracy in the new Office of Fair Access. HEFCE commissioned studies of the bureaucratic burden by PA Consulting in 2000 and 2004, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, reminded us. PA Consulting found that in those four years there had been a reduction of 25 per cent in the overall costs of meeting accountability demands on institutions. It is fair to acknowledge that that is substantial progress.
	The recently established Higher Education Regulation Review Group (HERRG) has given added momentum to the drive to reduce bureaucracy. But bureaucracy fights back hydra-headed. The cost of accountability was found by PA Consulting in 2004, as the noble Lord reminded us, still to be £211 million, equivalent to the cost of running two large universities. Just as HEFCE has agreed to five-year audits and is consolidating its dialogue with institutions into a single annual, regulatory conversation, the OST demands that institutions produce 10-year plans on finance, capital, human resources and maintenance of estates. The new Higher Education Innovation Fund is to be allocated not on a formula but, at the OST's insistence, on a competitive bidding basis which PA Consulting finds entails costs that are two and a half times higher than other competitive funding schemes.
	What is to be done about the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)? I declare an interest, or at least I ask for a previous offence to be taken into account, having had responsibility for the 1991 White Paper which proposed that arrangements should be made to generate a greater coherence in statistics. We thought that was an innocent ambition. We now have every university putting in data returns for every member of staff once a year. That does not have to be done by schools, the NHS, the Civil Service or the armed services. HESA's Destination of Leavers from Higher Education Survey surveys every full-time leaving student and every part-time leaving student. Can one not get perfectly acceptable data by surveying, say, one in 10? Departments and agencies seemed to requisition statistics through HESA at whim. The Information Management Task Group for higher education has a lot more work to do. No one appears to be in charge of HESA. I think it is owned formally by Universities UK, but why do the vice-chancellors, through Universities UK, not insist on restraint and good sense?
	It is not only the regulators who are at fault; many of the bureaucratic torments of academia are self-inflicted. The recodified statutes and congregation regulations of the University of Oxford add up to 175 pages in the Oxford University Gazette, two and a half of which recite the vice-chancellor's regulations on academic dress. The rearguard action continues against the new vice-chancellor's proposals to bring the governance of Oxford University into line with good practice across the globe. The RAE causes little to change, but the system, which costs £7.75 million annualised over six years, continues because academics, and not just those in the universities that always win, want it to continue.
	Universities cope with regulation and as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, suggested, some regulation has improved some performance. Many academics are bureaucratic adepts. I once attended a local branch meeting of the National Federation of Self-Employed and a man explained to me that his way of dealing with the Government was to stamp each form that arrived "not understood" and "return to sender". That alibi is not available to academics who are, by definition, clever people.
	Vice-chancellors, pro-vice-chancellors, registrars and human resources directors can handle the paperwork, but at a cost. Expensive new posts are created in institutions that are under-funded to respond to external accountability demands. Where, as all too often, academics are not sheltered from those pressures, a toll must be taken of the quality of teaching and research and the academic profession becomes less attractive to the recruits that it needs. We still have wonderful universities, but they are defying gravity.
	How can we go further in remedying the problem of bureaucracy? I suggest universities need to demonstrate that their corporate governance and their information and financial control systems really are good to remove the excuse for stifling oversight. Universities should not protest indiscriminately, for example about strengthening procedures for risk management which should lead to a lightening of overall regulation, or about the move to full economic costing, which should result in their being paid something more like the true costs of research commissioned from them.
	As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, government needs to be more willing to trust the universities. In his retiring oration as vice-chancellor of Oxford University in 2004, Sir Colin Lucas remarked, sadly, that government regulation has been articulated so visibly in a spirit of distrust of the universities. The Government must find ways to rationalise, co-ordinate and moderate their impositions on universities. There should be impact assessments of all proposed new regulations—individually and in combination. Their authors should be identified and rogue departments should be corralled. Somewhere in government there should be a power to stop new regulations in their tracks. The HERRG or some such body should be maintained on a permanent basis—there is some doubt about whether that is to be so—to carry out sceptical invigilation of regulation.
	Bureaucracy will always be with us, but the Government should make the price that it levies more worth paying by making policy and regulation more stable, funding universities more generously and allowing them more freedom.

Baroness Shephard of Northwold: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton on bringing these issues before your Lordships' House. The debate has been extraordinarily interesting and well informed. My noble friend Lord Norton set the tone. It is of course a particular pleasure to take part in a debate which includes the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. If today is anything to go by, we have many further treats in store. She will obviously make a terrific contribution to this House. I am sure that noble Lords were also immensely interested by the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, who spoke from absolutely first-class experience, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, who, as ever, brings a very stimulating analysis of the situation.
	I declare my registered interests as a member of the Council of the University of Oxford and as a member of the board of the department for continuing education at Oxford. A number of my remarks are informed by first-hand experience of the impact of bureaucracy that I have gained in those two positions. I know that the Minister, who is a very good listener, will have had his ear bent during his contacts with the University of Oxford, with which I know that he continues to have close links.
	In England, the sector includes around 130 institutions, educates more than 2 million students, employs more than 300,000 staff and accounts for a sliding scale of public money. Interestingly, a number of figures have been quoted in the debate. No doubt the Minister knows the exact sum. I thought that it was around £9 billion-plus. But whatever the sum, it is huge. It is obvious that such a sector has to have checks and balances. Institutions have to be accountable. That is understood.
	At the risk of appearing immodest, not to say stuck in the past or possibly breaking some invisible rule of your Lordships' House, I draw your Lordships' attention to the view of Universities UK that the relationship between government and the sector should follow the model established in the report produced by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, in 1997, for which I must also bear some responsibility. Universities UK, in quoting approvingly from the report, stated:
	"Institutional autonomy should be respected. While we take it as axiomatic that the government will set the policy framework for higher education nationally, we equally take it as axiomatic that the strategic direction and management of individual institutions should be vested wholly in the governance and management structure of autonomous universities and colleges".
	I am rather glad to come before the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, because he might refer to the many conversations that we had in coming, finally, to the kind of definition that there should be in the relationship between government and higher education. We finally came to the conclusion that universities and institutions of higher education contained quite a lot of rather clever people, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said—quite as many as there might be in bodies set up by government and, indeed, in the department. Therefore, surely, they ought to be responsible and able to conduct many of their own affairs, having taken into account the question of accountability for the use of public money.
	There is a saving grace for the Government in the rather difficult picture that has been painted this morning of the growing burden of bureaucracy; that is, that universities and colleges now receive funding from a variety of sources. That is why there is vagueness about the total amount of money spent on the sector. Each of those funding sources will obviously be anxious to establish its credentials of accountability, which in many ways is correct. But what is unacceptable is a situation such as that which occurred in 2003, when universities and colleges were required to undertake more than 60 separate consultation exercises. When one remembers that only 300,000 people are involved in the sector, that is quite a lot of work for each person. One would have thought, and hoped, that those who were consulting would have understood that the consultees' main purpose was to educate their students and encourage the development of scholarship and learning, not to fill in forms. But it seems, in that particular year anyway, that it was the task of nobody at the centre actually to think about the overlapping and cumulative burden placed on individual institutions by the collective enthusiasm for information and new procedures on the part of those involved with them. Had any representative of the inquiring bodies been present as the mounting piles of paper were discussed by academics and governing bodies, they would have been considerably enlightened as they heard what academics thought all that paper ought to be used for.
	More seriously, this amount of inquiry and questioning has undoubtedly had an effect on morale in higher education, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out. Universities UK notes a welcome reduction of 25 per cent in the regulatory burden imposed by HEFCE during the past four years. This, rather sadly, has been counterbalanced by an increase of 60 per cent in the regulatory burden imposed by other bodies. In addition, considerable extra compliance costs have arisen from the demands, as has already been said, of the newly established Office for Fair Access and the Teaching Quality Information and National Student Survey, and from the requirement for full economic costing.
	It is obviously accepted in Oxford and in other institutions that accountability is necessary where public money is involved, but there is, and should be, rather less than unanimity where micro-management from the centre is involved. I shall give a couple of examples of the more ludicrous requirements that have been imposed this year on Oxford and, no doubt, on other institutions, by HEFCE as it happens. The first example is a circular which was sent out in October, rejoicing in the title Monitoring Institutional Sustainability. Your Lordships will need no reminding that communications arriving at a university are scrutinised not only for their purpose, but for their transparency and comprehensibility. Some of those who read these communications, of course, may include internationally recognised linguists. I invite your Lordships to imagine the reception that this document's immortal prose received from academics. Among many other things, it stated:
	"Please provide a framework which sets out how the long-term sustainability of the institution is being managed ... this is essentially a statement which sets out how far and on what basis the leadership of the institution consider that the institution is on a sustainable trajectory".
	Oxford is 800 years old. I think that its sustainable trajectory—I find difficulty in saying "trajectory"—is perhaps established by now. Other delights were received during the year. Another circular from HEFCE was stirringly entitled Self-Assessment Tool for People Management in HEIs. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, mentioned Kafka earlier. Another noble Lord mentioned Nineteen Eighty-Four. Really, does one need to go much further? The circular begins:
	"This letter explains the purpose of the self-assessment tool for people management, and how use of the tool is one method which will enable us to mainstream our funding to institutions under the Rewarding and Developing Staff Initiative (R and Ds)".
	I must emphasise that these documents are taken seriously. They are worked on and worried over, and they are completed as competently as possible, not least because, in the case of the second document, funding is attached to their completion. But I am bound to say that one is left wondering whether time could be better spent on accomplishing the real tasks of a university.
	The Minister may feel that I am being unfair or, at the very least, selective, which I admit. But I reassure him that cheerier words are to come. A great deal of anxiety was felt in Oxford about the proposed access agreement, not least because the colleges and the university have been making enormous strides in outreach and access for a long time. That is due in no small part to the work more recently done by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, in her capacity at the university before she took over her present responsibilities. Visits to schools and colleges throughout the country; partnerships with LEAs; summer schools for underrepresented groups; regional events; information programmes for teachers, including professional development weeks; and subject-specific enrichment activities arranged by departments—all those approaches have been employed to ensure that Oxford encourages students from all backgrounds to apply. Pleasingly, a recent report from the NFER, commissioned by Oxford and Cambridge, has found that the focus of perception of Oxford and Cambridge among students and teachers has shifted from social mix to prestige and academic quality. That is a very welcome shift. Naturally, both universities are delighted, although we accept that much more remains to be done. The efforts that have been made by Oxford were recognised in negotiations with the Office for Fair Access, as was the fact that the necessary changes were imposed with a light touch.
	However, the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, remains: is valuable time, which could be better spent on accomplishing the real task of a university—that is, educating students and encouraging the development of scholarship and learning—being wasted on the plethora of consultations and micro-management initiatives that are hitting universities from every direction? The answer is quite clearly yes on the strength of evidence submitted by universities, not to mention the contributions in the debate today, but, hearteningly, the Government seem to accept the point, because last year they established the Higher Education Regulation Review Group. The group is entirely to be welcomed, as are its findings; for example, that there has been,
	"an accretion of overlapping requirements"—
	that is a key point—
	"for reporting, data production and inspection or audit in higher education",
	which has created,
	"an atmosphere of regulatory intervention, lack of trust and a compliance culture, with the potential to inhibit confident and innovative university management".
	That lack of trust really has to be taken seriously by the Government. Those are serious criticisms, and I am sure that the Minister will take them seriously. But they are capable of solution. Indeed, HERRG proposes solutions, such as reducing the number of special funding streams, abolishing multiple demands and so on.
	The Government are to be congratulated on setting up HERRG and on a number of other courageous decisions that they have taken on higher education. However, I think that the House will look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government, in the light of their experience so far, now believe that higher education can be trusted largely to run itself. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, let us hear it for universities and for trust in them.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, I am the third speaker who has connections with Hull University, and I express my indebtedness to that university. It is always a pleasure to be able to listen to, and now to follow, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, especially when she refers with approbation to something that she and I worked out long years ago. I respect the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for her contribution. In the light of the quality of her thinking and the clarity of her exposition, I say, Minister, watch out for the future!
	As a former administrator of 30 years' standing, you would not expect me to seek to bury bureaucracy. However, I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that it needs to be kept in its place. I congratulate and thank him for initiating this debate.
	Part of the problem of bureaucracy arises because those who distribute public money may be more concerned to avoid transgressing the constraints than to achieve the policy objectives. They are conscious of the gelding shears that lie in wait for them should the things that happen from the use of the public money which they have authorised be offensive in terms of probity or equity. So there is a tendency to protect oneself. A second reason for the problem is that it seems that from the point of view of those demanding information or requiring procedures, what happens at the other end is at no cost—it is on free issue—so there are no budgetary constraints on the demander.
	When I was chairman of the Post Office, one of my main problems was to constrain my enthusiastic and able lieutenants from demanding information and initiating new policies. I had to resolve that by creating a choke on their endeavours, by saying, "Nothing may happen without it coming to an executive board member for approval". There needs to be a constraint because it is on free issue—and were it not for my own perception, it would increase the bureaucracy if one gave the demander a constrained budget and had to pay for information. That would create more bureaucracy in getting the information to find out what it had all cost. But we need, therefore, effective instruments.
	On the other hand, as you would expect of a bureaucrat, I am not going to bury him. I can cite an occasion when, in working with the committee of inquiry that the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, appointed in 1996, we gave evidence that caused us to be very concerned. I mention that not as a criticism but as an illustration, because the grounds for that criticism have passed. In the evidence that we received, a body called HEQC said:
	"the Council's work does make it clear, that the consequence of current changes in higher education is that traditional understandings of what a degree is no longer hold good ... essential aspects of the academic infrastructure that used to support confidence in shared standards have been undermined, with resultant problems for students, employers, research councils and academics themselves, since the existing frames of reference no longer match reality".
	There are times when there is a manifest problem. It is not surprising after a major expansion in the number of students and university institutions that there is a problem, to which there must be a response; but it must be within the framework that the noble Baroness mentioned—that of the autonomy of the institution. So we have to find a framework in which the legitimate needs of government and other funding bodies and charities can be met, which avoids a huge bureaucratic overlay on the institutions.
	I have been very impressed by reports that have been mentioned, one done under Dame Patricia Hodgson and the other under Dame Sandra Burslem. They have addressed the issue of the overburden and come forward with constructive proposals to enable government and these bodies to obtain the information that they need without overwhelming universities. That has come up in other speeches; but I put it to the Minister that with the nature of the problem, which will never go away because of the forces that I have mentioned, we need a presence or group or whatever one wants to call it that will continue the good work of the two committees to which I referred. In that way, there will be a continuing choke on the enthusiasm of governments to introduce legislation without consideration—because many departments are not particularly concerned with the burdens on universities—which will cause government to take a balanced decision on the needs of the state and the needs of the institutions. I urge the Minister to respond to the representations that have been made about the need for a continuing capability.
	The second thing that is in my mind—it has been referred to several times—is the multiplicity of bodies seeking information. Reference has been made to the excellent briefing that Universities UK provided, as it often does for a debate, which refers to the way in which on the one hand there has been a saving of 25 per cent and on the other an increase of 60 per cent. I sometimes think, Minister, that it would save a good deal of time if we gave you a copy of the brief and shut up, but that would not be in accordance with normal parliamentary practice. But when there is a multiplicity of bodies, we have a problem.
	I thought that it would be helpful to contact a university—not Hull on this occasion—to get some practical examples. It would take too much time to read them out, but I shall give them to the Minister. We must look to the Government to take a stronger initiative in integrating and correlating the demands of these various bodies for information at different times, covering much the same ground.
	Last Saturday, I had the terrifying experience, having been summoned by one of my daughters, of assisting my granddaughter with her physics homework, which took me back more than 60 years. The issue on this occasion was electrical circuits. I discovered by hastily reading her notes, before I guided her through these mysteries, that if one wired a circuit in parallel rather than in series, the electrons would be buzzing around by the trillion; but if you constrained the flow of information more and more through one channel by wiring in series, one constrained the little beasts. What I am saying is that if there is a multiplicity of bodies in parallel seeking information from universities, rather than it being sought through one channel, it is no wonder that you get a plethora of inconsistent unrelated demands. The need is, when it comes to factual information, to see HESA's role not only as a demander but as a channel, which is a choke in itself—and a force for correlating these demands. So my second point is that when information is being asked for in parallel, we should get it through one system—and we must have a good resister in the circuit.
	It is not the case that the bureaucratic process needs to be burdensome. Reference has been made to the work of the small group under Sir Martin Harris, called Fair Access. As I listened to the noise, while there was much initial concern, it seems to have been handled with sensitivity and without a lot of burdens. I believe that that body has a very small staff of four. So it can be done with proper thought and sensitivity.
	I want to conclude by referring briefly to the broader issues that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and others have raised on the role of universities. The noble Lord referred to three costs. I was very impressed by his reference to "opportunity costs"; I got out my economic textbooks and looked it up in my mind—and, yes, it is a good phrase. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred by analogy to the role of universities and the other mainsprings of life. As I have said before, in medieval times the natural centre for the development of communities and of commercial and economic wellbeing was the castle. Then, in the 18th and 19th centuries, it moved to great manufacturing. Now, the centre will increasingly be the fountains of knowledge and research, the universities.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, if you inhibit the free thinking, enterprise and drive of academics with controls, you inhibit our overall wellbeing. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, universities have wider roles than just economic, and I was impressed by her recalling these. One of the roles I feel strongly about is that universities should be part of the conscience of society, and should speak out boldly on these issues without fear of any consequences.
	The universities are jewels in the national crown. There is a need for more trust, and to recognise the legitimacy of systems and procedures to see that money is well spent for the purpose intended. However, there must be arrangements along the lines we have discussed to ensure that the universities are in good health and full enthusiasm, and that the public purse is increasingly protected by recognising where the responsibility really lies.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I join with others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for introducing this stimulating debate. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that it has been interesting and informative. I have enjoyed listening to all your Lordships and in particular to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Like others, I look forward to hearing from her frequently in future.
	I also ought to declare an interest. I have spent a good part of my life as an academic. For the past 20 years I have been at the University of Sussex, where I remain a visiting fellow. Indeed, I will be going there tomorrow to deliver a seminar on science and government, so I retain a continuing interest in the subject.
	My academic career takes me back to the age that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned as somewhat exceptional, the 1960s and 1970s, when the UGC was the main funding body for universities, and funded them with block grants and quinquennial reviews. It was much less oppressive in terms of bureaucracy. In fact there was remarkably little bureaucracy, and most of us would agree that perhaps it was all a little too easy. It was too much of an old-boy network in many senses, because it was indeed largely old boys—there were very few old girls involved in that network. There was a case for tightening up on the culture. Whether we have swung too far towards micro-management has been one of the underlying questions in today's debate. It is an issue I shall come back to.
	The central issue is the one brought up by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech; that is, the question of trust. The UGC more or less trusted universities implicitly, and the breakdown of that trust underlies the development of the "audit culture". This culture developed in the 1980s, with the obsession of Margaret Thatcher's government with the notion of accountability and the question, "Are we getting value for our money?". With rising public expenditure it was right that these questions were asked, but again one has perhaps tipped over too far towards the audit culture. One of the interesting features is the degree to which that culture has been picked up and, indeed, expanded and honed by the Labour Government. A new managerialism has been applied to it, so that there is a new vocabulary, but, if anything, the micro-management has been extended rather than rolled back.
	I fully understand the problems of the overlapping empires of the different bodies, but I—and, I think, these Benches—also go along with the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that in many senses the universities have proved themselves to be dynamic and responsive to the challenges they have been confronted with. One can argue that the accountability regime was necessary because at the end of the 1980s we expanded the universities so fast. One of the interesting features was that at that point very little extra money went in. The amount put into teaching in universities increased very little throughout the 1990s, and it was not until 2002 that we began to see it increasing substantially.
	One of the results of this was the feature noted by the noble Lord, Lord Norton; namely, that the student/staff ratios have rocketed from roughly 9 to 1 in 1989 to 18 or 20 to 1 today, which, as he noted, is larger than in our secondary schools. In addition, we have seen the overcrowding of buildings and the increasing demoralisation of staff. During the 1990s I was myself an academic, and I saw more and more of my time consumed by the whole process of running a research group or a department. There was less and less time to do one's own research, which was crammed into evenings and weekends. You knew frequently that you were not doing as good a job as you ought, because you just had not got time to do it. There were constant pressures and apologies to my husband because I could not take part in the activities he wanted me to, because I just had to complete an article or get a chapter finished. This was what was so oppressive.
	In many senses, the apogée of this audit regime came with the example of the department of economics at the University of Warwick, which began putting figures on this. They looked at how much it had cost the department to undertake the QAA exercise in 1999, and came to the conclusion that in one department alone it had cost them over £250,000. That led to the HEFCE asking the PA Consulting Group in 2000 to look at this.

Lord Giddens: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for deferring. With all these costs, one should take account of net costs. Students who apply from abroad, for example, expect good teaching. The QAA regime has probably contributed to the volume of income flowing into universities, so it is a mistake to talk just about the gross costs.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I accept that it is a mistake to talk about the gross costs. I accept that we need to have a quality assurance regime, and that we have benefited from the degree to which there is quality assurance regarding our mainstream universities and the attraction of foreign students coming from that.
	Apart from the issue of the immeasurable costs identified by PA Consulting, the question is, who is looking at the guardians here and how much are they costing us? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? One aspect of all this, and of the work of the Better Regulation Task Force which has also been mentioned, has been that we have changed the framework of the quality assurance group from departments to regulations. The group has been set up under Dame Sandra Burslem, whose report in the summer was a refreshing and frank assessment of its current activities. The other major activity to get to grips with the bureaucracy, which has also been mentioned, is the setting up of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group—HERRG, as it is called—under Dame Patricia Hodgson. I rather liked Alan Ryan's comment in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 15 August in relation to the setting up of these two groups. He said:
	"If South Pacific was right that 'there is nothing like a dame', two dames must be unbeatable".
	The report of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group—with its terms of reference being,
	"to review policies for their regulatory impact on higher education in England, regardless of departmental origin, to explore existing areas of bureaucratic demand and to recommend ways of doing things better"—
	sums up what one wanted from it. In its initial report, picking up the theme of trust, the group quite openly said that its main task was,
	"to improve trust on all sides".
	The report continues:
	"Unless and until an institution is at risk of failure, funding bodies should expect to place greater reliance on management, audit and governance arrangements within colleges and universities themselves, with extra reporting by exception and only where justified by ... risk".
	Dame Patricia and her group have achieved some very useful banging together of heads, particularly in terms of the gathering of statistics—everyone seemed to require different sets of statistics, and she has managed to pull that together—and the rationalisation of funding streams. The group is now working to achieve a concordat between the relevant inspection agencies and funding streams so that HESA becomes a single source of base data statistics and the QAA itself supplies basic inspection and quality assurance data for the whole of the sector.
	As other noble Lords have noted, although these initiatives have been very welcome, one of the problems is all the other initiatives that are going on around them. So far, the OFFA has not made very much impact. The working out of bursary arrangements has been very substantial, and we have all noted that it has managed to achieve that with a relative minimum of bureaucracy. However, we have to remember that each university will have to determine students' applications for bursaries while having regard to the means tests that they have set themselves.
	I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, who mentioned the Parliamentary Question last week in which it was revealed that, last year, HEFCE had issued 1,573 pages of guidance. In the Answer, Mr Rammell made it clear that the department conducted its relationship with the university sector through three non-departmental public bodies—the Student Loan Company, HEFCE and the Office of Fair Access. He then went on to note what each had been doing. But what was missing from the Answer was what the department itself does. As we know from HERRG's initial report, in 2003 the department issued no fewer than 44 consultation documents to the universities. In addition, UUK issues consultation documents. So it seems to me that the Answer was, at the very least, economical with the truth.
	Mention has also been made of the new report from PA Consulting. It is good that, in present financial terms, the cost of bureaucracy has decreased from £280 million to £211 million. But £211 million is still a very large amount of money. We have to reflect on whether it is necessary for the sector to be inspected and audited quite so hard and on quite so many different fronts. I recognise, of course, that there is gold-plating, which in many senses elaborates the cost.
	I come back to a thought expressed by Tony Travers, professor of local government at the London School of Economics, at the end of the 1990s, when he was considering the university sector. He said:
	"Stalin would have been proud of the system of ... controls imposed on the higher education system in this country".
	That put me in mind of three lessons that I learned from Alex Nove about the impact of the command economy. I used to teach the economics of command economies, for which Alex Nove was very much my bible. The first was that micro-rationality leads to all kinds of distortions. If your target is set in terms of the number of nails, people will produce many small nails; if you set your target in terms of the weight and size of nails, people will produce many very large nails. The first point, therefore—I suppose it is Goodhart's law—is that any target distorts the outcome that you seek. The second lesson that I learned was that targets create fixers: those who will sell themselves as able to twist your statistics, meet your targets and secure the desired outcome of the system without your having to do too much. You can find yourself paying out a lot of money for your fixers. Thirdly, it creates a regime of cheating, because cheating becomes acceptable. We have to be aware of all those issues.
	From these Benches, I conclude by endorsing the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard; namely, that although we agree that where large amounts of public money are spent there should be accountability, it is also important to respect the autonomy of institutions, and that the definition which she and the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, ultimately came up with is a good one:
	"While we take it as axiomatic that the government will set the policy framework for higher education nationally, we equally take it as axiomatic that the strategic direction and management of individual institutions should be vested wholly in the governance and management structure of autonomous universities and colleges".

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for introducing this important and very timely debate.
	I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on her brilliant maiden speech. I first met the noble Baroness some years ago when we were on a panel of "Any Questions" in Sheffield. I recall that it was my first appearance on that show and that I felt like a terrified rabbit facing headlights. The noble Baroness's calming and self-assured manner was a lifesaver. I am very pleased that she is now among us. Indeed, I believe that your Lordships' House is a better place for her presence.
	Our economy needs high quality and innovative research to drive British industry forward and improve our nation's quality of life. Our universities must continue to take the lead in this. However, a strong educational ethos, which attaches to each individual university, is now diminished by uniform regulations that undermine individualism.
	I am in danger of repeating what I think has been said at least twice, first by my noble friend Lady Shephard and, secondly, by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. It is also a repetition of what the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said. I shall therefore cut it short. It is to say, as he said in 1997, that institutional autonomy should be respected. Institutions must have the autonomy to develop their own academic culture to push research and development forward. As we have already heard, there is a collective burden on universities and academics from a number of bodies, including the QAA, the RAE and the HEFCE. A university's compliance with each of the different bodies it needs to please is not always compatible. A university has to provide detailed information on the standard of postgraduate supervision to six research councils and the arts and humanities research board, plus the funding council and the QAA. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) requires universities to complete an 80-page self-assessment form in order to qualify for mainstream funding through the rewarding and developing staff funding stream.
	Dame Patricia Hodgson, chair of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group, considers:
	"So-called best-practice codes are multiplying on every issue until they threaten to suffocate good management".
	Dame Patricia Hodgson also estimated that the annual cost of regulatory demands to the sector was greater than the £210 million estimated by a HEFCE report last year. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I hope that Dame Patricia Hodgson's review group is able to prune back some of the laws.
	The Research Assessment Exercise can be a demoralising force for academics who feel that they are being scrutinised under a microscope. This is not the environment in which our academics can flourish. They are not provided with the necessary freedoms to pursue long-term research. Funding streams encourage collaborative research but the RAE focuses on individual author publication. Time for teaching and research is squeezed out by paperwork. The knock-on effect for students is massive. They have less interaction with tutors and teachers. Students are getting less out of academic life. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said that regulation imposes a real cost in a number of ways, with a burden excessive in relation to need, and with an impact on attracting and retaining academics. People are put off going into the profession. Academics are under-paid, under-valued and over-burdened, too constrained from doing what they want to do. Academics are not paid to be administrators and it is certainly not their chosen profession. As my noble friend Lady Shephard asked, is valuable time being wasted on a plethora of regulatory initiatives and micro-management of our universities at every level?
	Academic professionals are under enormous stress. In May 2005 a survey undertaken by the lecturers' union, NATFHE, found that many lecturers were working over and above their contracted hours. Some 91.5 per cent of respondents said that they were not paid for the extra hours they worked. More than 60 per cent of respondents said that their workload somewhat affected the quality of their support to students and the quality of their students' experience and 24 per cent said that it significantly did.
	Lecturers have little personal time. The same survey concluded that 43 per cent of respondents said that their workload significantly affected their personal life. One could argue that the long holidays they have provide them with time to catch up with administration and to earn an extra income. This is not the case. For example, external examiners are paid very poorly. When academics are not teaching they are involved in research. A barrage of paperwork in addition to that is unacceptable. Massive disincentives are built into the system. Intelligent graduates must be attracted and encouraged to stay in our universities, not put off by numerous regulations. There were reports last week that the Education Secretary left a conference hall by a side door in an attempt to avoid hundreds of lecturers protesting over pay. Is that illustrative of the Government's attitude towards higher and further education professionals?
	We appreciate that there has been some progress in reducing bureaucracy.

Lord Giddens: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. What policies would the noble Baroness's party institute to put up the pay of university teachers, and by how much would it want to see that pay increased?

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I am not prepared to answer that question. I do not think that it is relevant. We are talking about university bureaucracy. I am trying to illustrate that those involved in higher education are looking for support and respect from the Secretary of State but are being ignored. However, this is not the place to discuss how my party would fund this matter, and I am certainly not in a position to do so. The noble Lord's party is in government. It is my party's job to discuss the way that we consider those involved in higher education are being treated.
	We appreciate that there has been some progress in reducing bureaucracy. The Government have made some limited progress in reducing that bureaucracy. Apparently the cost of external bureaucracy to universities had fallen by 25 per cent in real terms over the past four years, based on a study by PA Consulting of the demands of bodies such as HEFCE and the QAA. However, this appears to be based on the reduction in teaching quality assessment by the QAA. Regulation in other areas and from other organisations has increased by almost 60 per cent over the four-year period since the 2002 HEFCE/PA Consulting report. Universities UK considers that the main increase in regulation in this period arose from:
	"Risk management requirements, the Higher Education-Business Interaction Survey, the NHS-WDC Student Numbers, requirements for monitoring and reporting on intellectual property and spin out companies and teaching quality information requirements".
	Furthermore, the PA Consulting report did not estimate the costs of the compliance with the Office for Fair Access, teaching quality information/national student survey requirements and the impact of full economic costing, which have added further to the administrative burden. What are the solutions?
	We on these Benches do not deny that there must be a system to hold universities to account—as so many noble Lords have said today—for the way that public money is used and to ensure that we have the very best standards. However, this must not discourage research and innovation; it must not hinder academic institutions in their work; instead, it must encourage and facilitate it. After all, how can we expect our academic institutions to inspire the next generation of researchers, wealth creators and philanthropists unless those in that pivotal teaching role are themselves inspired? Motivation is a much under-valued resource. That needs to change at all levels.
	Is there a possibility for economies of scale? As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, asked, do we need this multiplicity of bodies? As my noble friend Lord Norton said, the system may be effective but it is not an efficient one. Even if data can be gathered in an effective manner, they must be used intelligently to improve the system. Co-ordination between the various funding bodies needs improvement. They operate at arm's length on a discrete basis. We need to look at the co-ordination between funding bodies and involve university staff and students in the process. The Higher Education Regulation Review Group reported in June 2005 that:
	"There could be much better co-ordination of quality assurance and data collection and fewer consultations. A major burden is caused by the fact that different funding bodies across government have developed their own reporting, data collection and inspection/audit requirements, with which they ask HEIs to comply".
	The group recommends a formal concordat between the funding and inspection bodies in the sector to streamline the collection of data and quality assurance.
	What assistance will the Government provide to HERRG in the implementation of its recommended "formal concordat"? In the Minister's view is it essential that there is co-ordination and clarity for university funding? Will the Minister confirm when the "perceptions of bureaucracy" poll in higher education will be carried out? When will the findings be presented?
	In conclusion, I refer to three statements made in the House today. First, universities now survive largely on the good will of academics. That was said by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, said that we still have wonderful universities, but that they are defying gravity. What the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said was a practical approach to questioning why we are now in this position. There is probably an awful lot of truth in it. He said that those responsible for handing out public money are more concerned with transgressing constraints than achieving the aims. That goes to the heart of many more debates which take place in your Lordships' House on the spending of public money, and is something that we should all consider.
	I hope that the Minister will take those three telling statements on board, together with the crucial reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to the lamentable lack of trust that now exists in our academics and academic institutions. The situation must improve if our academic institutions are to remain globally first class. In this country, we currently have an amazing resource in our higher education academics at all levels. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, is quite right; let us say it here for British universities. But we are in real danger of losing that resource, and if we do we will not recover.
	The Government have repeatedly stated that education is crucial to the future of this country. We all know that perfectly well; it is a given. The trouble is that the same Government have yet to show any demonstrable courage in setting our institutions free from their heavy, bureaucratic hand. Perhaps the Minister will lead the way. If he does, we will support him.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for giving us the opportunity to discuss universities and bureaucracy. The noble Lord and I were once labourers together in the regrettably small academic field of those who study the working of parliaments. I was glad to hear reference to all kinds of people to whom in our rival interpretations of parliament neither of us went anywhere near. We had Trotsky, Kafka and Stalin in the course of the debate. I was waiting for my noble friend Lord Giddens to bring in Gramsci, whom he usually does on these occasions. Perhaps that is waiting for his next speech.
	Mention was also made of Orwell, who has many more lessons for the debate today, not least in his brilliant essay on the use and abuse of English language. We might all agree—particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard—that it should be sent to all those writing consultation documents that go out to the education world; notably, to the world of universities, where people are quite capable of reading them and understanding that their meaning may not require quite the convoluted language used in setting them out. I am glad that the noble Lord and I have finally been re-united in a common commitment to promoting the interests of higher education.
	We have had highly distinguished contributions from other noble Lords with long experience of higher education, including the excellent maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who speaks from decades of service at the University of Oxford. She is now, as she said, the new, light touch and non-bureaucratic independent adjudicator for student complaints. Her speech was every bit as hard-hitting and effective as those who knew us at Oxford would have expected. We will all be rushing out now to join our local health clubs while promising never to sue the owners, whatever happens to us in consequence. We welcome the noble Baroness to the House and look forward to her future contributions.
	Before I get into the detailed points raised in the debate, I want to join my noble friend Lord Giddens in setting the wider context for some general remarks made today about the state of our universities. My noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, asked for three cheers for universities and a recognition of the outstanding role they play today in our national life. They gave the first two cheers; I am happy to give the third.
	Britain's universities, taken as a whole, are in a strong and healthy state. They represent one of the most valuable, thriving and competitive parts of the UK's modern economic and social fabric. Not only are they doing more than ever before to enrich our nation's economic and social life in a highly competitive way; they also continue the work that they have done over a long period in enriching our society—one which prizes knowledge and free inquiry. There is no need to take my own word for it. Appropriately for the debate, one of the clearest statements concerning the overall strength of the university sector came in the valuable report earlier this year by the now infamously named HERRG, the higher education regulation review group chaired by Dame Patricia Hodgson. In the introduction to its report, Dame Patricia says that our universities,
	"are rightly seen as a success story".
	The group continues:
	"We have a critical mass of world class universities and a growing number of institutions offering leadership at national and regional level. Nationally, universities now educate more than 2.2 million students, employ over 300,00 staff and attract some £4 billion in foreign earnings".
	I will return to the Hodgson report in a moment. But it is important to dwell at the outset on why our universities have achieved their absolute and comparative success in recent decades.
	In part, it has been due to their great inherent strengths; the traditions of independence, excellence and free inquiry, deeply rooted in a liberal democratic tradition which has developed in this country over many centuries. But most UK universities are only a few decades old, if that. We can also point to significant successes in public policy—under both the previous government and this Government—which have contributed to the success of our universities. Under this Government, I would particularly mention the significant real-terms increase in state funding. For science and research, there has been a huge increase in investment, alongside maintenance of the unit of resource for teaching even as student numbers have risen—something which, alas, never happened under the previous government.
	The noble Lord, Lord Norton, referred to the deteriorating staff-student ratio. In fact it has not deteriorated much since 1997. There was a substantial deterioration before that when funding, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, did not keep pace with rising numbers. However, the precise figures in the staff-student ratio are a change from 17.6 in 1997 to 18.2 in 2003–04, the last year for which we have figures.
	Of more direct relevance to the debate, perhaps, there has been a significant strand of public policy—under both the previous government and this Government—in the form of deregulating our universities. That sets them free from state control to enable them to develop more distinctive missions, and to serve society better as they see fit. The previous Government reduced state control in two crucial areas. First, they re-established the polytechnics as fully fledged universities, free of local government control and regulation; secondly, they decided—entirely correctly—to deregulate the overseas student fee. These changes were hugely liberating for higher education. We have taken both of them further. We have enabled a wider range of well regarded higher education institutions to become universities and award their own degrees, and—through the Prime Minister's initiative on overseas student recruitment, which the House discussed earlier this week thanks to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Dearing—helped universities to increase overseas student recruitment substantially, achieving an extra 88,000 overseas students in just five years. They bring with them substantial additional income, as well as wider educational and social benefits.
	Since 1997, this Government have made two further radical deregulatory changes, which I believe will come to be seen as at least equally transformational for our universities. The first was the decision recommended by the report of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, which was commissioned in the first instance by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, to introduce in England a fee paid directly by students over and above existing state funding. The second was the Higher Education Act 2004, which deregulated the fee system further, allowing universities to charge a variable fee of up to £3,000 with a new and fair system for repayment by graduates.
	The noble Lord, Lord Norton, said that university lecturers were underpaid, under-resourced and undervalued. My noble friend Lord Giddens asked the noble Baroness what the Opposition might do about it. I can say what the Government have done. That is not only to maintain the unit of resource in real terms and to invest substantially more in the universities—particularly in science and research—but also to give universities the freedom to raise additional funding themselves. That is something which they were not allowed to do before. All of that is crucial context for our debate.
	In terms of many quality and efficiency measures, the United Kingdom's university system is widely regarded as one of the foremost in the world. Certainly, many European observers envy our system, particularly because of the freedom and autonomy which our universities enjoy in matters such as staffing, course flexibility and the diversity of funding sources open to them.
	Our universities are broadly successful, and I see that as the starting point for the debate. Our concern about bureaucracy—which is a serious and continuing concern—is that we want universities and their staff to succeed to the maximum extent possible free of red tape. That brings us directly back to Dame Patricia Hodgson's report. After the introductory section that I quoted from, she refers to the fact that this year the Higher Education Funding Council for England will channel more than £6 billion of public money into higher education in England, to which is added another £3.4 billion from the research councils, health authorities and other bodies, in a sector with an annual turnover in excess of £15 billion. As she said:
	"Government and taxpayers need to know such large sums are well spent".
	The challenge is to improve on a system of accountability, and we are all agreed in this debate that there must be a proper system of accountability, which is not one of command and control but on the contrary is as light touch as is consistent with effective audit and public responsibility.
	Before I go into the detail, I shall say an important word about the Higher Education Regulation Review Group, which has been referred to throughout the debate. It is in the second year of what was originally intended to be a two-year life. It has done valuable work, which has been welcomed both by the universities and the Government, and it has a programme in hand to improve information collection and external inspection. Several noble Lords have asked what our plans are for its future, and I can give a clear answer to that question. My honourable friend the Minister for Higher Education met Dame Patricia and her colleagues earlier this week, and he told them that he would like the group to continue its work beyond the two years for which it was established. I am glad to say that they have agreed to do so. We will be asking the group to look as a matter of urgency at some of the requirements for universities set out today, including for universities that are more than 500 years old to demonstrate sustainable trajectories—and perhaps even those that are less than 500 years old as well—not to mention the assessment tool for people management and the consultation document on reworking and developing staff.
	It has been generally acknowledged in the debate that we have made good progress on the specific issue of bureaucracy. Last year's PA Consulting report on accountability costs estimated that overall costs of meeting accountability demands had fallen by about a quarter in real terms over the previous four years, representing a real-terms saving of over £60 million. A particularly significant source of saving was the radical changes made to the Quality Assurance Agency, notably the abolition of the old system of subject inspection reviews, which I know from much personal interaction with university leaders at the time was an issue of acute and to my mind absolutely correct concern.
	The issue of the QAA and subject reviews dominated the last debate in the House on this issue, also initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and I am glad to report that in that respect at least there has been radical change. However, I stress that our policy on regulation has not been based just on ad hoc decisions but rather on a wholly new approach to the issue of regulation, which dates back to the inquiry into higher education bureaucracy that we asked the Better Regulation Task Force to conduct four years ago. That report, published in 2002, set out interrelated recommendations under five headings, and I shall go through each of those five areas to set out what we have done. I stress that in each case we regard it as a work in progress, taking up the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. We take seriously all the points made in the debate today, and I know that they will be taken seriously by the Higher Education Regulation Review Group as it continues its work.
	The first recommendation by the task force was for better mechanisms to enable universities to challenge bureaucracy. The task force suggested a suitable group, working with the Minister for Higher Education, to agree an action plan to reduce burdens on higher education and to act as a gatekeeper to prevent unnecessary new burdens in future—hence the creation of the Higher Education Regulation Review Group, which has provided a consistent challenge to HEFCE and other stimulus to funders and policy-makers across government in respect of universities.
	The second key recommendation of the Better Regulation Task Force was:
	"The Government should ensure that it, its Agencies and those contracted by them, consider the likely impact of new proposals and publish them".
	We have acted on that recommendation. The Government produced a detailed regulatory impact assessment for its higher education White Paper in 2003. HEFCE now routinely assesses the accountability burdens of all new proposals—for example, those for the new research assessment exercise which, like its predecessors, remains based on the peer review so widely supported across the universities. Real change resulted from those discussions. For example, the Office for Fair Access was a new burden following last year's Higher Education Act, which has been much referred to throughout the debate. There was a good deal of concern about OFFA. Indeed, the 2004 PA report highlighted OFFA as particularly worrying in its implications, but it added that much depended on how OFFA chooses to interpret and administer its eventual remits. Some 17 months on, we know what has happened to that remit—it is generally accepted across the university world that OFFA has not had the deleterious consequences that were feared.
	Sensitive to the new model of self-regulation that we have been developing across higher education, we invited Sir Martin Harris, the outgoing vice-chancellor of Manchester University and a former president of Universities UK, to become the director of OFFA. I doubt that there is anyone more highly respected in the university world than Sir Martin. The process of signing off the access agreements under the 2004 Act for universities to be able to levy higher student fees has now been completed with virtually no controversy or bureaucracy. Sir Martin operates with a staff of three and a half. He has now signed off access agreements for every university, conducting discussion at an early stage in each case to minimise difficulties. OFFA has now set up a system for ongoing modification of access agreements virtually by exchange of e-mail. The only requirement—a perfectly fair one—is that changes to bursary regimes do not disadvantage the students they were established to serve. As my noble friend Lord Giddens so rightly said, the whole basis of our reform is that it should widen access to universities and not in any way narrow it. The access agreements meet a key requirement of the Better Regulation Task Force that new burdens on universities should replace old ones wherever possible. The access agreements replaced outright the widening participation strategies previously required of all universities by the funding council. All that has been accomplished well in advance of the introduction of variable fees next October.
	The third task force recommendation was about funding streams, which have also been referred to during the debate. The task force identified the deep frustration and irritation in universities at the plethora of separate pots of money, each of which requires a separate bidding process. The task force identified 21 funding initiatives administered by HEFCE, and suggested that the Government should reduce them into a small number of key themes, with audit and reporting requirements in proportion to the amount of money involved. Once again, progress has been made, and continues to be made. After discussion with Dame Patricia Hodgson's group, HEFCE announced earlier this year that institutional special funding streams would be limited to eight at any one time. There will also be a minimum amount of £5 million per funding stream. HEFCE's financial strategy is based on the explicit principle that as much higher education funding as possible should be provided through core or block grants. That leaves as special funding streams initiatives which are intended to put some significant resource behind new policies seeking to meet agreed priorities, such as the new Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which have brought a real sense of recognition to teaching staff in a wide range of universities. That case involves £56 million a year over three years, to support institutions offering exemplary teaching in different subjects. We still see that kind of initiative as going through dedicated grants, but otherwise it should go through block grants wherever possible.
	The fourth area of concern raised by the Better Regulation Task Force in 2002 was audit and inspection. As well as the issue of QAA subject reviews, which I have already referred to, the task force pointed to the many different agencies and professional bodies that audited and inspected higher education. Although I do not think that they had the parallel of electrical circuits directly in mind, their view was very much that of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. The more you multiply the number of agencies responsible for inspection and the production of paper, the more you are going to get coming out at the other end in a kind of unrelated way. The task force challenged the Government and its agencies to find a better match between inspection and risk, and to place more reliance on institutions' own internal procedures. We have made real progress here, and we are on course to make more progress. In the case of the QAA we move from the laborious individual inspections of subjects to a new framework of self-assessment and institutional audits. The framework was examined earlier this year by a group chaired by Dame Sandra Burslem, formerly vice-chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University. The group reported savings of 40 per cent on previous QAA costs. It also recommended a further simplification of the process of self-assessments and the QAA has accepted this recommendation.
	We have also been paying close attention to those many other bodies which do impact on universities. The Training and Development Agency for Schools is from this year reducing by two-thirds the frequency with which Ofsted inspects teacher training courses. The National Health Service, working with the QAA, is developing a single comprehensive quality framework for all health courses, which were previously overseen by a mass of different and separate agencies. Given the importance of the health and medical teaching and research sectors to our universities, this is a vital piece of work and I expect to be able to bring the results to the attention of the House when it is completed next spring.
	Once again, an important lead is being taken here by the Higher Education Regulation Review Group. It is promoting a concordat between all the major public funders and inspectors of higher education which we hope will be agreed by them in the spring. What may come to be known in due course as the Hodgson concordat would commit all those various different agencies that interrelate with the universities to rely on a single QAA judgment for their basic assurance about quality in a university—meeting a point made by my noble friend Lord Howarth about the need for the QAA itself to be in the driving seat in this area—only allowing further intervention to satisfy themselves about the quality of provision in their particular specialism. Ultimately we hope that independent professional bodies will also agree to co-operate in the same way—not just public bodies and inspectorates. I am pleased to say the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the Architects Registration Board have already indicated support for this and we will be encouraging others to follow in their wake.
	Finally, I turn to the issue of data—the fifth area highlighted by the task force. In the one minute left to me I fear that I cannot explain the constitution of HESA and who it is accountable to—that it is a subject rather akin to the Schleswig-Holstein question. I can say that HESA has been removing and simplifying requests for data and HEFCE announced earlier this year that it was moving to a "single conversation" about financial returns from universities, with well run institutions no longer required to submit a mid-year financial return and other reductions in data obligations. The Hodgson inspection concordat that I mentioned will also cover data. All signatories will pledge to rely on HESA as providing the single source of basic data about an institution.
	In conclusion, and as the Hodgson report rightly says, the challenge in this area is to achieve the right balance between national standards setting, monitoring and inspection on the one hand, and individual accountability on the other, recognising—this is the crucial point—that the accountability framework needs to evolve with a sector that is becoming more mature and skilled at intelligent self-evaluation and risk management, thanks to the changes of recent years. Those are precisely the objectives that we are pursuing. There has been good progress, but more is needed and I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate for the further advice that they have given us today.

Lord Norton of Louth: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. The list of speakers is notable for its quality. We have had a splendid maiden speech from the distinguished academic the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and contributions from others who have worked in universities or have had ministerial responsibility for universities.
	I join the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and the Minister in giving three cheers for what our universities do. There is fantastic work done in our universities, not only in terms of research but in terms of teaching. Rather than hearing the words, "Do this, do that", academics will benefit enormously from hearing the words, "Well done". I may also be able to help the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, because it occurs to me that the term "selective scanning" might be a little more appropriate than "dipstick", if less evocative.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has quite pertinently drawn attention to the impact of new laws which eat into academic time—we have to be trained in dealing with the legal requirements—as well as impose burdens on universities. We have had some compelling speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Dearing, as well as from the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth: in the space of 40 years we have in a sense gone from one extreme almost to the other and that situation needs addressing. As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, says—a point which has underpinned this debate—bureaucracy breeds bureaucracy; it needs restraining. Regulation is necessary, but it must be lean and efficient regulation.
	I am most grateful to the Minister for what he said, as well as for recalling old days. I also acknowledge his courtesy in sending me and other noble Lords material in advance of the debate. As he says, academics are doing well. The problem is that they are not being paid for it. We have world-class universities, so why not reward them properly—both in terms of funding and in terms of a light regulatory regime? Much more money will be available to universities next year. My fear is that if we retain the existing regulatory regime, universities will play safe and devote resources over and above what is actually needed to meet the demands, or what university administrators anticipate as the demands, of the regulators. That is why we must tackle the problem of regulation now.
	I welcome what the Minister has said on that issue, especially in relation to the Higher Education Regulation Review Group. As I have said in my speech, I acknowledge that there is some appreciable movement; the more that goes forward, the better. But, for reasons I have given, we still need to go further. That is what we need to keep pressing and I am sure it is something to which we shall return. My Motion calls for Papers. I mentioned that in 2004 universities received more than 1,500 pages of documents from HEFCE. There is already plenty of paperwork in existence; I do not wish to add to the burden. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Sport in the Community

Lord Pendry: rose to call attention to the role of sport in the community; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, the importance of the Motion before us is such that I am convinced it will receive in the forthcoming contributions from noble Lords the recognition due to it. Sport has a unique propensity to appeal throughout the nation, binding people together in energy, passion and pride. In my speech I intend to touch briefly on the impact of sport in the community at various levels and in various walks of life.
	Before I do that, however, it would seem strange to talk about this subject without acknowledging again the great achievement of the noble Lord, Lord Coe, and his team in securing the Olympic and Paralympic Games for this country in 2012. Winning the 2012 Olympics is testimony to the fact that Britain is a great sporting nation with superb facilities at the elite end. But this success does not mean that we should celebrate only the efforts of our country's most talented athletes. It means we also have a duty to ensure that their work and achievements are used to inspire others to get up and get involved.
	We must make sure that access to opportunities are available to all, to benefit those who are already inspired to participate, and to act as a means of encouraging those who have either lapsed or have never been inspired to participate in sport in the first place. The Olympic success for London highlights not only the huge passion and involvement Britain has in sport at the very highest level, but will naturally shine a light on the quality of our sporting efforts at lower levels, in local communities and in schools.
	As much as we might hope to show how well we can host the Olympics, the importance of sport in the community cannot be overemphasised and we need to ensure that the less glamorous, less televised, and the less high-profile sporting activities which go on all across the country are not overlooked. The 2012 Olympics will no doubt foster scrutiny of the British sports system as a whole, and we should view this as a chance to deliver outstanding success in all areas of sport and make sure we can be as proud of our school and community sport as we can of our champion athletes. Winning the Olympic bid for 2012 should not be a surprise to anyone because in its sports manifesto of 1997 the incoming Labour Government promised that:
	"A Labour government would provide wholehearted support to efforts to bring major international events, such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games, to this country."
	We have fulfilled one of those aims and I am sure people will also be aware of the recent announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to begin a scoping project for a potential 2018 World Cup bid. As president of the Football Foundation, I am sure that that exercise will be nothing more than a formality.
	The foundation's Football Stadia Improvement Fund has ensured that we have stadia of which we can be proud throughout the country—from the heights of the Premiership through to the semi-professional leagues. Once we include the forthcoming Wembley Stadium, it is no idle boast to suggest that we have the facilities to make the English World Cup bid in 2018 the very best there has ever been. I am sure that every Member of this House will back that bid to the hilt.
	In my time as president of the Football Foundation, I have been given first-hand experience of the important role that good-quality facilities can play in the community. Stadia from the heights of Manchester United's Old Trafford or Newcastle United's St James's Park, down to the more modest realm of Bower Fold at my own Stalybridge Celtic ground, are natural hubs for the community.
	That may seem straightforward enough but, at a time when our lives are increasingly disparate, with the public often erring towards individual needs rather than those of the community, it is important that there is a place where people can come together. Too often in the past, football and other stadia have been the preserve of young white men. Although progress has not been quite as fast as we would have hoped, I am glad to say that that is changing. I commend the work of bodies such as the FA, the RFU, the ECB and others in their attempt to attract a wider and more representative community to engage with and enjoy their sports.
	We have made much progress in developing sports stadia but recent years have seen something of an epiphany when it comes to their use. Gone are the days when a facility would be flooded with enthusiasm and light for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon only to remain idle for the next six days. It is clear that communities gravitate towards these places—the homes of their heroes. I congratulate clubs up and down the country which have committed to opening their stadia for a variety of community activities throughout the week.
	As your Lordships well know, obesity is a growing problem in our communities. The public health White Paper 2004 states:
	"Voluntary sector and community organisations are often much better than the statutory sector at engaging with groups of people who face most difficulties or who do not have access to the traditional sources of advice on health".
	The Central Council for Physical Recreation recognises that its members have a key role to play in promoting public health and physical activity. The CCPR has more than 300 members, comprised of voluntary sports clubs, recreational organisations and the national governing bodies of sport, so they are well placed to make that kind of statement. They recognise the value of sport in engaging people in healthy pursuits and in both creating and maintaining happy, balanced communities.
	The problem is clear: many of our young people lack enthusiasm and motivation, and one obvious reason for that is that they are unhealthy. Access to sedentary pastimes, which sap a person's energy and vitality, are quite easy to come by compared with access to active pastimes. It is no surprise that that is the case.
	Future generations deserve better access to good sporting facilities—not simply to propel them to Olympic glory but to offer them healthier starts to their lives. We need to keep on making efforts to ensure that that happens. Fortunately, much has been done, not just with regard to health but in terms of sport being a vehicle for social inclusion, filling people's lives with a greater sense of purpose and fostering a sense of community.
	The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, along with Kate Hoey MP, recently produced an independent review of sports policy in the UK, which took a constructive approach to the problems that I have described. It is heartening to see that they are aware of the good practice that currently exists and just as aware that much work still needs to be done. Their contribution to the debate on sport is welcomed.
	Time will not allow me to highlight many more examples of the value of sport in our communities, but I certainly want to draw your Lordships' attention to a project that I have applauded on more than one occasion in this place—Positive Futures. The project draws on Football Foundation and Home Office funding to help to overcome youth offending in the most deprived communities in the country. Thanks to this programme, tens of thousands of young people are managing to turn their lives around by engaging in sport.
	Positive Futures has also been working closely with SkillsActive, the sector skills council for the active leisure and learning sector, to develop new national occupational standards focused on facilitating community-based sport. That will ensure that a high standard of training is delivered to the next generation of youth and sports development officers. Their skills are essential in ensuring that the value of sport is realised in every community. It is pleasing that the Home Office has recognised this good work; it announced only yesterday that it would continue to back Positive Futures. Perhaps other noble Lords will raise that point.
	Should noble Lords need to be convinced any further of the impact that sport has on local communities, perhaps one of the greatest examples can be found just five miles down the road. The Mile End stadium—a stadium constructed with a whole new range of floodlit pitches for the community to use—received £1 million from the Football Foundation.
	Another scheme in Millwall was led by the Corporation of London—an organisation that perhaps one would not immediately imagine to be closely tied to support and partnership. With the Football Foundation, it has developed a community scheme at Millwall football ground which is first class. The Corporation of London has shown the kind of proactive approach needed to encourage people to engage with sport and to ensure that opportunities are made available to all aspects of the diverse community that it represents.
	Sport is not just about having an impact in urban communities. The Labour Party has been accused many times of not attending to the needs of rural communities. But a number of my colleagues, including the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, have committed to delivering a sporting future for rural communities as well. As a member of the All-Party Group on Shooting and Conservation, I express my support for shooting sports. They offer a great sporting outlet which can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of age, sex or ability. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation has worked hard to include all types of people in the sport and to shed the exclusive image which the sport has had in the past.
	Many noble Lords who have shared my passion on this issue will be aware of the tendency of certain outdoor sports to be rather territorial. In the past, that has caused tension and, in some cases, has led to a failure of sports to come together successfully to meet the common goal of participation. One such example is the difficulties encountered by canoeists—or paddlers, as I am told they should be called—where millions of people are denied access to many of the waterways of England and Wales. Admittedly, anglers have a strong case for protecting their right to fish in peace. However, I hope that a sensible compromise can be found so that the millions of anglers and paddlers in this country can enjoy their sports in harmony. I am sure that the British Canoe Union would welcome meaningful talks with the angling and landowning fraternities.
	This is an exciting time for sport, not only with the hosting of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games but with the challenges which are to be met in sport at the grass-roots level, where record amounts of funding are going into schools and communities. Much more still has to be done to extract the full value that sport has to offer in every community, and I hope that, as a nation, we will respond to the challenges ahead. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Chorley: My Lords, I am glad to be the first to thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for initiating this debate. He brought to us his unrivalled experience of sport—mainly mainstream sport—although at the end, when he got on to the subject of canoeists, he touched on the kind of things that I want to talk about.
	I want to speak about those sports which principally take place in the natural environment. They are essentially non-competitive and tend to take place in wild and sometimes hazardous environments. It is that which makes them attractive. I am thinking mainly of mountaineering and rock-climbing; but also, for example, canoeing—which the noble Lord talked about—sailing and even serious hill walking. They are popular. The British Mountaineering Council, for example, had a membership of 56,000 in 2001. A 1993 survey by Mintel reckoned that 700,000 people participated in mountaineering. I must say that I find that quite difficult to believe, but that is what it said. Mountaineers and rock climbers are important to tourism, and therefore to the economies of our hill farming areas—a currently highly relevant point, given the depression in hill farming. They are not spectator sports, but they are practised by young and old.
	For the purposes of our debate today, I will concentrate on the forms of the sports as practised by young people. First and foremost, they are healthy activities—an important point in an age of increasing obesity. They are attractive to young people because they are adventurous. I would suggest that man is an explorer by nature, and this is particularly true of the young—pushing into the unknown, testing their limits. Young people need adventure.
	Some years ago, the late Lord Hunt of Llanfair Waterdine, John Hunt of Everest—the first director of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme—chaired a group which produced a report on the need for young people to have adventure. This led to the Campaign for Adventure, the subtitle of which was "Risk and Enterprise in Society". Its objective is to influence public attitudes to risk, fostering an attitude that chance, uncertainty, hazard and risk are inescapable dimensions of the human experience. John Hunt believed—as did others including myself—that there was no better way of creating good citizens and promoting a vigorous and enterprising society than by introducing young people to adventure, to identify and manage risk. Mountaineering and rock-climbing are a splendid way of doing this.
	Regretfully, we live in an increasingly feather-bedded and risk-averse society. We are increasingly litigious. If something goes wrong, someone must be to blame. If someone can be sued, we are invited to call a lawyer. We are told that schoolteachers and others are becoming increasingly reluctant to take young people on adventurous activities. We are told that insurance arrangements are becoming increasingly difficult and expensive. We will shortly have before us the Compensation Bill. Whether it will make this particular situation better or worse I do not know; I suspect the Minister will not wish to be drawn on that at this stage, and I can quite understand why. It may be important to us, however.
	Against that background, I wish to draw attention to two problems which I find worrying. They are quite different, but both could be said to reflect the law of unintended consequences. The first is a draft directive from Brussels called the "Working at Heights" directive. It is to be fleshed out with detailed rules and best practice by the Health and Safety Commission. The directive is, of course, directed at safety rules for high buildings and that sort of thing. The commission takes the view, however, that it must also apply to activities in the natural environment; for example, rock climbing, and even hill walking in difficult country. It maintains this view in spite of a clear opinion from Treasury counsel, commissioned by the Government, which said that there was nothing to prevent these sorts of activities being excluded and treated separately.
	The Health and Safety Commission appears to be unwilling to listen to this professional advice from practitioners. Indeed, some of its proposed rules for best practice could, in certain circumstances, be positively dangerous. If the difference between industrial buildings and the natural environment is not recognised, I suggest two things will happen. First, many of the outdoor pursuits organisations, such as local education authorities, the Outward Bound Trust, the professional guides and, perhaps most important of all, the Mountain Leader Training boards, will have to alter, or even restrict, their activities. Secondly, as a consequence, the number of untrained young people going into the hills will perhaps increase and, inevitably, so will the number of accidents.
	The second point is quite different. It concerns a knock-on effect of the 2012 Olympics. It appears, so I am told, that UK Sport is shortly to withdraw funding from all non-Olympic sports. In the field of mountaineering and the related activities, I have singled out two which will be badly hit, but I think there are another four or five in the same boat. One is Mountain Leader Training UK, which is the lead body for accredited training. Apparently, if grants came not from UK Sport but from Sport England, that would be perfectly okay—I do not understand the niceties. Another is the British Mountaineering Council. The sums of money involved, when set against the astronomical costs of 2012, are tiny. It is £28,000 a year for mountain leader training. We all want, do we not, to get young people out into the hills, to adventure, and to do so safely? They need to be taught, and the teachers themselves need to be trained in mountain craft. Do we really want to play with safety training like this, by eliminating such a modest but vital grant? The British Mountaineering Council gets a grant of £40,000, and uses it to make grants to people and groups organising mountaineering expeditions to the greater ranges; the Himalayas, the Andes and so forth.
	The withdrawal of this funding may be devastating. It is ironic that we who invented the sport of mountaineering in the Alps 150 years ago and then explored the greater ranges, and we who made the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 and have continued to be among the world leaders in international mountaineering, should sweep all this experience and history aside. As I said, both are sad examples of the law of unintended consequences.
	The last thing I want to do is to end my remarks on a sour, carping note. Mountaineers are a resilient breed. They are not whingers. They are independent and highly distrustful of bureaucracy and, indeed, of the nanny state. We hate rules; we cherish independence. That is why I and others like me, such as Lord Hunt or, today, Sir Chris Bonington, regard it as so important that young people should also have the sort of experience we were lucky to have when we were young. This sounds rather pompous, but surely this is how we should train young people for citizenship.

Lord Grantchester: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Pendry for initiating this debate, and for his continuing championing in your Lordships' House of the cause of sport. We share a passion for football, as he has been chairman and president of the Football Foundation and its predecessor body the Football Trust, the funds for which came from contributions from the pools companies and which did so much to implement football ground safety following the Taylor report.
	I declare an interest as the chairman of Liverpool County FA's Local Football Partnership and trustee of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, which is now entirely funded by Sportech, the parent company of Littlewoods Pools.
	I pay tribute to the work of Everton's Football in the Community scheme. All Premiership clubs put great store by developing links with their local communities. As a past director of Everton, and a continuing shareholder, I am pleased that Everton is still in the forefront of community schemes. Everton's scheme became a charity in 2004, and for the second year running has been recognised by Business in the Community for a number of activities, including work with both primary and secondary schools, soccer camps across Merseyside, Saturday morning coaching courses for 5 to 12 year-olds and women's and girls' football programmes, while also running eight disability teams.
	Liverpool County FA's local football partnership, in conjunction with the local authorities and other partners, continues to develop the FA's four-year plan for football, which is its response to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's challenge to improve the nation's health through sports activities. The LFP focuses the continuing development of club football through the FA's chartered standard programme as well as continued improvements in the delivery of football inside and outside the school curriculum, and the improvement of football facilities, with pitch improvements being a priority. Liverpool County FA's local football partnership has invested around £5 million towards those aims.
	Sport continues to play a crucial role in the community at all levels. It provides a safe recreational environment, positively encouraging behaviour and attitudes, and inspiring both young and old of all abilities to maintain health or develop new goals. We live in a world whose pace of change is ever-increasing. People change jobs more often and consequently move house more often. More students spend informative years away from home. Sport clubs provide a healthy environment to meet and develop new friends, thereby bringing together communities through shared experiences and understanding.
	Last week in your Lordships' House, via a Question tabled by my noble friend Lady Massey, we were made aware of developments in cricket. We were all thrilled this year by the Ashes win. Our sporting heroes are increasingly treated as celebrities. They play a large part in people's lives and help to develop participation. I was interested in the Minister's reply that 46 per cent of schools have links with local cricket clubs. I support the contention that sports links are developing from the situation in Cheshire. I can report that at grassroots level cricket is booming in the community.
	The decline in cricket in schools in the past, which is reflected in the fact that this year's Ashes win was the first since 1986, has gradually been filled by clubs, spurred on by the pyramid structure following the McClaren report. Cheshire now has nine divisions, whereby a small club—Oulton Park Cricket Club is a concrete example—can progress from the lower echelons to the top. Last year Oulton Park, a small rural club in mid-Cheshire, won the double, topping the county's premier league, and won the Cheshire Cup. David Humphage, the chairman of Cheshire County Cricket paid tribute to Oulton Park, saying that it had raised the bar in county cricket. That result came from a small rural club.
	That has been done in conjunction with the initiatives and schemes of DCMS and the ECB. Critical to that is the development of Clubmark, the equivalent of football's charter club programme whereby clubs must demonstrate child protection policies as well as good management, coaching standards, and so on. The Treasury has responded by instigating Community Amateur Sports Clubs—CASC—which enable clubs to claim gift aid on grants and income. Sportsmatch has also enabled clubs to raise standards by matching pound for pound club sponsorships.
	The result is visible. Cheshire, a minor league county, shared the national title with Suffolk in the minor counties final. It was shared because the English weather washed out the event—some things take time to change.
	Sports development links between clubs and schools have been instrumental in consolidating success. Oulton Park Cricket Club now has links with nine primary schools, and is developing winter coaching in schools. The ECB has responded by making its £750 per premiership club dependent on that club fielding three players under 21. The funds to minor county cricket are dependent on the teams having an average age of under 26. Clubs now run teams down to under nine level.
	In all that, we must not forget the progress of women's success. All that places a huge burden on infrastructure and facilities, and the Foundation for Sports and the Arts has responded with a successful pilot scheme in Cheshire to fund equipment purchases, such as mowers, seeders, rollers, sight screens, and so on. It is now looking to roll out a national scheme.
	We have the prospect of the London Olympics in 2012. Already sporting opportunities have been identified, and must be shared across the nation. The structures have been developing under the Government's encouragement of the participation of all in sport. Each member of the community can find an appropriate sporting opportunity, and through achievement can build self-confidence. I am confident that we shall continue to enjoy those benefits.

Lord Giddens: My Lords, I suggest to the officials of this august institution that they should think of having meals-on-wheels for those of us who are dedicated enough to speak in two sequential debates lasting over lunchtime. A portaloo might also come in handy, and maybe some of those socks that you get on aeroplanes to stop thrombosis, as I have been wiggling my feet for the past two-and-a-half to three hours.
	I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Pendry on initiating the debate, and more generally on all the work that he has done, in your Lordships' House and throughout the country, on the promotion of sport. I declare an interest that overlaps with his, as I am a member of the board of trustees of the Football Foundation.
	I am a strong believer in the redemptive power of sport to intervene effectively in social communities; it is linked to the traditional position of its importance in the moral education of younger people; and it can help with the health and general well-being of the nation.
	I shall start with a series of cautionary remarks. Although I appreciate the programmes that the Government have instituted to try to use sport for social ends, there are some cautionary tales that should be borne in mind otherwise some of the policies could easily misfire. First, sport can unite communities, but it can also split them. It can foster solidarity but can lead to something close to hatred between communities or different sections of a community. I am a Tottenham Hotspur supporter—perhaps I should have declared that as a special interest, as that is certainly what it is. I was going to a match against—well, let me say a neighbouring team of some importance. The biggest conflicts are always between close neighbours, as we know.
	A group of Tottenham supporters, who were on the train, were not only violent looking, but one of them was smashing his fist repeatedly against the window. There was blood all over the window, and the burden of what he was saying was not exactly favourable to the other team. It was a horrible demonstration of what sport can do in dividing communities and creating as many problems as it might resolve.
	Secondly, sport can help us to overcome class and ethnic divisions, but it can also enshrine and deepen them. I once wrote a dissertation on sport and society in contemporary England. One of the striking things is how accurately sport reflected class divisions. That still continues to some degree today. Some of us are mature enough to remember a time when the descriptions of the cricket players were different. Those who were professionals were not allowed to put their first name or initial on the list, but were known simply by their surnames, and amateurs sometimes had an asterisk by their name and were allowed to include their initial. Sport is riven with social divisions. Since it is a social phenomenon it often directly reflects those divisions. We should think of the division between rugby league and rugby union as a good example of that.
	Tennis has developed as a middle-class sport. When asking why there have not been many Tim Henmans, the class system of our society is one of the reasons. Question: "How many players do you have in your tennis club?". Answer: "We have 750 tennis players. Well, actually we have 50 because the other 700 are all waiting for courts". That more or less is the position of tennis, which does not have the facilities that are necessary to generate the kind of world-class performance that we want.
	Thirdly, sport can reduce gender inequalities. I echo what my noble friend Lord Grantchester said on the importance of this. However, at the same time, it can also embed them. We know that this has been true historically. There are sports that have been considered girls' sports, and these are often separate from boys' sports. We know that sport is an emblem of masculinity, an emblem sometimes of aggressiveness, of the differences between the sexes, rather than a phenomenon that unites them.
	Finally, we all know that competitive sport in particular—and here we must watch the culture of the Olympics—can breed an obsession with success, which can have a very ugly side to it, in terms of players' behaviour and what athletes are called upon to do. We all know that this has happened when, for example, sport has been too closely controlled by the state. Think of those child gymnasts in eastern Europe and how they were bluntly exploited; they were exploited sexually as well as being harnessed to sport. There are some countries, which I shall not name, where one aspect of such practices seems to continue. When we look at government policy on sport—and this Government have, I think, encouraged sport—we have to bear these considerations in mind, in order to see how far these policies, and those organisations linked to them, are effective. Since 1997 this Government has introduced a plethora of initiatives on sport, including White Papers, taskforces, and so forth; it adds up to quite a lot, I think. My feeling is, and I would like the Minister to comment on this, that it still does not add up to enough. Sport has this immense motivational power, which has barely been tapped.
	There are so many deserving schemes one could mention that seek to harness this motivational power. I would like to mention just one of them, of which I have been an interested observer: the Charlton Athletic Community Trust. Charlton Athletic FC has been one of the most community conscious of the Premiership clubs and it deserves a pat on the back for that. The project is based in Eltham, where 44 per cent of offenders under the age of 16 say that they lack things to do, and that that is the main reason for their criminal activity. Fifteen per cent of children in Eltham are classified as obese and general health indicators for the area are awful. The kinds of scheme that Charlton Athletic and the Football Foundation have been involved in are massively impressive in trying to enter these areas by means that could not be used otherwise. It is the power of sport that allows them to do this.
	However, and this applies to a large range of this country's sport agencies, I feel that we need to gather far more evidence than we presently have as to what is effective. We have a large range of schemes; they look good on paper. They may be good in practice, but often we do not know. It is not enough to have good intentions or to repeat empty propaganda about how good sport is for us. For the reasons I mentioned earlier, a project initiated with very good intentions can rebound and produce the opposite of what was intended. I looked for evidence on the use of sport around the world to further such community objectives as reducing social exclusion, and the evidence is very ambiguous. Some schemes work and some do not. Disturbingly, research from the United States shows that some very well motivated schemes actually increased ethnic tensions. Sometimes the sports involved were seen to be simply for whites and sometimes simply for blacks. Sometimes they re-established a gang culture in the area, being taken over and monopolised by local gangs. We have to be on our guard against this. Generally, I do not think that there is enough evidence about which of those groups set up in this country work and which do not. It is not enough simply to say that we have good intentions.
	The old bugbear of all government programmes also appears in sport. So many programmes are devoted to social improvement that even those who spend their lives working on them, as I do to some degree, do not know what they all mean or how they relate to each other. In the case of social exclusion, for example, you have sport action zones, health action zones, Sure Start, New Deal for Communities, neighbourhood management, Pathfinders—I could probably go on to name around 70 such organisations. A study of a small town in Cornwall found, I believe, around 70 government initiatives in that one town to help deal with social exclusion, but hardly anybody knew the overall picture. Maybe someone in Government knew, but the people in the local community did not. The Government should integrate its social exclusion policies more effectively.
	What I said earlier implies, to me, that you cannot just use sport at a local level. It is all very well to have local schemes. The national structure of sport and local sport are intimately connected. If the national structure is corrupt, or even if it reflects the class divisions mentioned earlier, then these things are intimately part of the local community and attempts to change them will be far more difficult if there are not also attempts to change them at a national level. In the case of tennis, for example, many poorer people do not see tennis as a sport for themselves. We need more effective governance in sport. I was pleased to see the report on the FA recently and we need to push ahead with such governance. I give as an example national anti-racist programmes; it is important to support them as they have a very big impact on the local community, not just at a national level. So they should; that is what we want.
	Finally, I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Grantchester, who talked about the importance of women's participation in sport. There are now extraordinary differences between this country and the United States. Women's football is one of the fastest-growing sports in this country, and rightly so, but in the US it is absolutely massive. A recent report from the monitoring organisation that regulates women's sport in the United States says that for the first time, if you include fitness activities as well as sport, there are more women participating in sport and fitness activities than men—the first society in which this has ever been known. I am not suggesting that this country should aim for a situation where women are more active than men, but we should aim for one where they are as active as men. Because of the stereotypes I mentioned earlier, I think it is necessary to include fitness activity alongside sport; not everyone wants to play competitive sport. Just as important is how far people undertake fitness regimes.
	I would like to conclude by asking the Minister a few questions. First, how far do we support programmes for which there is no real evidence that they work? Secondly, how far does the Minister agree that there is an over-proliferation of programmes? Thirdly, what are you going to do about women's sport, especially increasing access to women's sport among poorer people? It is especially difficult to do this among poorer women.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens. The noble Lord has a remarkable ability to be a master of all subjects in your Lordships' House and speaks with such passion. I envy the fact that the noble Lord never uses notes; I shall be using my notes.
	I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for introducing us to this very important debate. Indeed, we were very lucky to come up with a draw in Faisalabad today. As every speaker has emphasised, the importance of sport in the community cannot be overstated. People might say that it is not as important as law and order, yet sport keeps many people off the streets and away from the temptations of crime. People will say that it is not as important as health, yet regular participation in sport keeps people healthy, out of hospital and in work. It is not as important as education, people will say, yet sport teaches self-discipline, teamwork, patience and a host of other qualities.
	It is not as important as the war on drugs, people will say, yet one of the best ways of keeping young people away from drugs is helping them and promoting them in sport.
	The importance of sport in community is clear, and it would be unfair to say that the Government have not recognised as much since 1997. Whether they have done enough is another matter. What has been lacking for so long, and what is still lacking, is a properly integrated approach. Within sports structures, it often seems as if—like a lowly Premiership team when the England manager is in the stands—everyone is trying to do his own thing when teamwork would probably yield greater results. I have to declare an interest as a supporter of Chelsea, which is fortunately not in the lower ranks of the Premiership.
	The timeless lesson of team sports—that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts—would be well learnt in the corridors of British sports politics. This point is well made by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, who I am delighted is speaking in today's debate, even if he is not in his place at the moment, in his excellent Review of National Sport Effort & Resources, which was published in March this year. The third of his five key recommendations is,
	"to improve the local delivery of sport and suggest the Government considers how it can support the co-ordination of public, private and voluntary sector investment—as well as LAs and regional bodies –in order to improve local sporting facilities".
	I believe that this is the key. British sport should start playing as a team, with every stakeholder pulling in the same direction. The captain of that team, setting the strategy, has to be the Government. The lack of joined-up policy is nowhere more evident than in the delivery of community sport.
	Who delivers sport in the community? In part, it is private companies, which provide a variety of gyms and specialist sports centres. Yet their plans, particularly plans for large footprint, multi-sport sites, are often constrained by lengthy and costly planning applications to local authorities. In part, community sport is delivered by local authorities themselves. Yet the age of the facilities and the standard of management at public leisure centres vary considerably. Again, drawing reference to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, the very best boroughs, such as Plymouth, generate a profit of 23p per visit from their sports centres. At the other end of the scale, the subsidy required for each leisure visit in the borough of Hackney is no less than £13. The national average is a subsidy of £1.34 per visit, which is equal to a total annual subsidy in England of half a billion pounds simply to keep the lights on at local authority sports facilities across the country.
	Who else delivers sport in the community? In part, it is the education sector. Yet community use of school and college facilities is being unnecessarily hampered by VAT liabilities. It is hard to accept that when sports facilities are provided by a city academy or a voluntary aided or foundation school, community use can jeopardise the possibility of zero rating. Such costs fall to the school. The risk of incurring such liabilities means that many schools are reluctant to promote community use to the extent that they otherwise would. Joined-up policy is required. The team captain—the Government—should act.
	These are specific issues with specific solutions that would significantly enhance the delivery of sport to communities up and down the country. I wholeheartedly support the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, for the development and communication of,
	"a single system for sport in the community".
	It is surely the task of the Government to ensure that there is a common purpose and a shared set of performance targets from local level up through the system to government.
	In recent years, much has been said in your Lordships' House and in the other place about the sale of playing fields. I welcome the fact that the rate of sales of playing fields has markedly decreased in recent years. Any sale of an asset, such as a playing field, which contributes so much to the community, seems a waste of resources, yet the Government deserve credit for progress made in this area. I am also pleased to note that in our schools, children are now being offered at least four hours of sport per week. Your Lordships will be aware that in this important aspect of education, we still lag behind many European countries, but at least we are starting to move up the table.
	Ever since my upbringing in Cape Town, South Africa, I have had a great passion for sport and, perhaps because of my youth in that sports-mad country, I have never been ashamed of the fact that I enjoy winning. The British sense of fair play is naturally admired around the world, but I have always been bemused by the sense that this country is somehow more comfortable with a gallant loser than with an outright winner. That is absolute nonsense. There is, of course, no shame in defeat. But victory brings huge dividends. They were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in his powerful speech, and include increased participation and national morale. As a nation, we should sacrifice nothing in the pursuit of victory.
	This year has brought outstanding examples of what sport can achieve when we win. Ask anybody involved in English cricket about the effect of winning the Ashes this summer, and they will tell you about the soaring interest in the game in clubs and schools, and about the dividends of victory. Ask anybody involved in the British Olympic Association or in sport in the city of London about the effect of London's successful bid to stage the summer Olympic Games in 2012, and they will tell you about the dreams launched in millions of young minds. In the Ashes and in the Olympic bid British people set out to be winners, not gallant losers, and sport in this country will reap the rewards for years to come. Sport brings this country together: the haves and the have-nots, the young and the old, and the north and south. Of course, our teams will not always win—I have mentioned our fortunate draw today in Pakistan—but my vision and hope is the day when our solid national structures, properly integrated within one national sports plan, will come to the fore and ensure the effective delivery of sport in the community. That, for me, is the win-win scenario.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Pendry secured this debate. Once again, he calls upon us to consider the importance of sport in benefiting communities, and I fully agree with his arguments. It is a great pleasure to be in a group of speakers with such a wide variety of interests in sport: participating, administrating, watching and supporting. But I express my concern that sport is not just about competition—a point that has been made by other speakers. Competitive sport is important, and I, too, like winning, but sport is also about health-related fitness, which is a vital concept to which I shall return in a moment.
	As the only woman participating in this debate—although there are a few sisters on the Benches and maybe one or two honorary women—noble Lords may be expecting me to focus on women and sport. But I shall not do that today, as I have done it before. I shall focus my remarks on young people in sport and, as an example, I shall draw on the Cricket Foundation's Chance to Shine initiative. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Grantchester referred to the importance of cricket and to the importance of women.
	I should declare an interest as a Lady Taverner. Lady Taverners raise money—close on £1 million last year—to enable young people with disabilities to play sport. I am proud to be associated with that aim. Young people with disabilities also belong to communities and want to be active.
	Sport in the community affects a whole range of factors related to well-being, including health, fostering community spirit, and, thereby, combating negative issues such as drug and alcohol use and crime. Many communities recognise that and are sharing facilities such as school swimming pools, sports grounds and indoor sports areas. The extended school day and the implications of the Children Act, with its focus on integrating services, should develop that further. We shall see what happens.
	In the many consultations that have taken place recently with young people, they identify being healthy as a key outcome; for example, in the report Every Child Matters. Young people have asked for community facilities where they can participate in sport and otherwise entertain themselves. The Green Paper, Youth Matters, points out that:
	"Teenagers, their parents and communities all want more positive things to do ... when young people are involved in activities and are busy they are less likely to drift into trouble".
	My noble friend Lord Pendry has spoken about the Positive Futures initiative in which young people are helped to take part in sport. This morning, I heard on the radio an item about antisocial behaviour orders. The Social Exclusion Unit on which the report was based—and which I now have to hand—relates to young adults with complex needs. Briefly, it says that it is not enough to punish young people but they must also be given support. Did we not all know that already? I welcome that and I believe that in all communities, including prisons and rehabilitation centres, sport can help to foster good self-image and self-confidence. I am glad to see a cross-government approach to this, including the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which has an aim of increasing the take-up of cultural and sporting opportunities by people aged 16 and over by 2008.
	I return to my earlier statement that support should be at least partly about health-related fitness. Not everyone enjoys competitive sport. My noble friend Lord Giddens emphasised that—and I wish he would go to get his sandwich. Girls and young women give up sport in great numbers as they grow up and leave school. Yet they could be and are attracted to dance, yoga, pilates, to some gym activities and to many outdoor activities. I believe that we should expand on that type of activity in communities to provide young people, especially young women, with a positive option.
	I now turn to the Cricket Foundation's Chance to Shine initiative as an example of how sport can be fostered in communities, involving schools and local facilities such as clubs. The aim of the programme is to regenerate competitive cricket in state schools. It was launched in May this year and has an appeal to raise £25 million over five years. At this point, it is appropriate to ask the Minister whether the Government will match that sum pound for pound, as I hope they will. Appeal money will be spent over a 10-year period to provide high-quality cricket in state schools through coaching and competitions delivered through focus clubs, coach and teacher training, resources, equipment, facilities and school holiday activities. In 2005, 12 pilot projects were undertaken in urban and rural environments. Given a continuing build-up, the plan is to have planted cricket firmly in 5,200 primary schools and in 1,500 secondary schools—almost a third of all schools—over 10 years. That is good news. The playing of cricket has been reduced over the past 20 years or so with disastrous results on the involvement of people in local club cricket.
	Why an initiative for cricket? Why do I believe it is so important? Given the success of England's men's and women's teams against Australia this summer, many youngsters have been fired up to play cricket, as the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, has said. I see them on commons, in yards and in the street trying out their bowling and batting skills. It is a great national game. I am glad that we have moved away from the concept of gentlemen and players, decried by my noble friend Lord Giddens, thanks partly to our late and much missed colleague, that great cricketer, Lord Sheppard of Liverpool.
	The appeal document from the Cricket Foundation maintains that cricket enables young people to live healthy, purposeful and balanced lives. It is the ultimate team game. It encourages a wide range of social skills as well as physical and motor skills. It has high standards of conduct and provides good role models. My fellow Lancastrian Andrew Flintoff is a good example. His performances in the summer and his bowling recently in Pakistan have been inspirational. He remains modest, good-humoured and supportive of young people.
	Cricket crosses the gender divide. I believe that cricket for girls is the fastest-growing sport. It provides for those with disabilities, such as those in wheelchairs or with visual or hearing impairments. It draws together people from many different cultures and backgrounds. It also develops patience, concentration and imagination. What better attributes could one encourage in communities? Local clubs and schools can work together to develop young cricketers and clubs will be encouraged to support young cricketers from local schools. That is already happening. Involvement from schools in the independent sector is anticipated. They, of course, have the potential to share facilities and traditional experience with state schools.
	I want to give an example from one of the 12 Chance to Shine pilots which was carried out in Darwen, in Lancashire, where I was born and brought up, and where I watched my first cricket from the age of about three, when I was taken to the local ground by my father. No doubt thanks to that early inspiration, I went on to play first-class cricket and I developed a lifelong passion for it. In the pilot, coaches from Darwen Cricket Club worked with four primary schools and two secondary schools. Both secondary schools had been through difficult times; one of them was in special measures, was closed down and then reopened. The schools played their first cricket for many years as a result of Chance to Shine. One head teacher felt that cricket could play a part within his school in improving strategies and, as he said, "building responsibility and discipline".
	I have described how one initiative can impact on communities. I am aware that there are many other sporting activities that are also dynamic and exciting. I return to what I said at the beginning of this contribution, that young people themselves are asking for facilities and activities that foster health and well being and sometimes that means sporting facilities. I do not think we cannot ignore their appeal.

Lord Hoyle: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I want to thank my good friend Lord Pendry for initiating the debate. It is hardly surprising, given his interest in sport throughout his life, and it gives us all who are involved in sport an opportunity to put forward our views about community activities. I shall concentrate on two activities: cricket and, not surprisingly, rugby league. I declare an interest in both sports: I am president of my local cricket club, Adlington, and importantly I am chairman of Warrington Wolves.
	First, I turn to cricket. Following on from what my noble friend Lady Massey said about cricket—that is, mainly league cricket rather than club cricket—particularly in the north-west, I want to talk about our activities in giving children the opportunity to play. We have four sections; namely, the under-11s, under-13s, under-15s and under-17s. Every Friday during the season the kids train. There are three qualified coaches to give them training. They play cricket on decent pitches, which is very important. One of the problems is that many state schools cannot provide the type of pitches that private schools can provide. Kids can get frightened by the ball, which can be dangerous. All these sections play in leagues.
	In addition, boys and girls at the primary schools in our village have been brought together to play cricket. They played for a trophy for the first time this year, which is intended to be made an annual event. Adlington, unfortunately, straddles Bolton and Chorley. There is a Chorley development committee where all the cricket teams in the Chorley area meet every three months. Teams have been formed in the region—particularly for 11 and 13 year-olds—one of which got to the semi-final this time. There is always someone from the Lancashire board present at their meetings. That is going well. During the winter there are facilities for kids to play in indoor nets so that they do not lose touch with the game. All that is very important and augurs well, particularly, as has been said, because of our success in winning the Ashes. Let us hope that all is not lost in Pakistan and that we win the next test.
	At Warrington Wolves we are so proud of what we have achieved. We won the Rugby League community awards in 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2004, we were better: we won the national community award against opposition from other sports, particularly football. We claim that we do more for the community than Manchester United, which we can be very proud of.
	We have also been given a boost with the new Halliwell Jones Stadium, which we moved into in February 2004. That gave us an opportunity to develop something that has not been done in any other stadiums, but an awful lot of interest has been shown in what we have achieved. Several football clubs and other rugby league clubs have been along. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Giddens is not here. He talked about enmity in sport. I am very proud that rugby league is a friendly sport. Spectators mix together. No one could get more excited or more involved with their teams than rugby league crowds. At the end, friends, just like players, go for a drink and talk over what went wrong in the game. We should all aim for that. In stating what has been achieved, I hope that I have put the doom and gloom a little bit right.
	At the new Halliwell Jones Stadium there is a community floor. The community education section of the borough council has moved in, together with our community staff. Another side of the stadium is taken up by the primary care trust. In that we bring health and sport together. It is very important that in 2005 we founded the Warrington Wolves Community Learning and Sports Foundation, which brings together the Warrington Collegiate to provide educational facilities, the community education section of Warrington Borough Council and the Warrington Wolves community team. Together, we are able to provide classes and opportunities for adults as well as children. They come along and do not regard it just as a sports stadium, but recognise its education and health aspects. It is very important that we bring that together.
	I am particularly impressed that youngsters come along and partake in classes and education in what is a new environment for many of them. Many of them are the most difficult children in some of our schools. They are kids who for one reason or another are contracted out of normal education. They come along and facilities are provided. We give them lessons on computer skills and so on that are linked to the sport that they may be interested in. A wonderful opportunity is provided for them to go forward.
	We also know that not all children are interested in rugby league. I am sorry to say that, but they are not. Even in Warrington, we know that some of them are interested in soccer. We provide them with opportunities to play soccer, cricket, golf and even tenpin bowling. There is a wide variety of sports in which they can participate. But the fact is that these kids come along and see sport as something that they can enjoy. We have found that with a lot of kids who come along, the fact that the classes are allied to sport means that they have got an interest. Even if they do not participate, they take a big interest in sport. Certainly, we as a club benefit from all that we do in all these directions, which is extremely important. We have also got the primary care trust, which is running classes on healthy eating and helps kids with problems of obesity and so on. Altogether, there is a coming together of sport and education under the one stadium. To us it has made a lot of difference in our relationship with schools. All secondary schools in the Warrington area play rugby league.
	This year, we are also encouraging girls and women to participate in sport. The fact that the European women's soccer championship matches were held in the Halliwell Jones Stadium has made a lot of difference in girls and women being interested in sport. A lot more local women's football clubs are participating. The local women's rugby league team has also benefited. So we are awakening interest. It has also been extremely beneficial for the club. Since moving into the new stadium, in two seasons, average crowds of just over 7,000 have increased to 11,000. A lot of young people come along. We offer not only facilities but also cheaper tickets. They bring their families, so the whole family is getting interested in sport, which is excellent.
	The Halliwell Jones Stadium is allied with Tesco, which could not get planning permission for a supermarket just outside the area. However, it got it because we were allied to it. It was said that it was granted because we are a community stadium and because we had been able to build on that and look to the future. One of the most important aspects of the club is its community side. It brings together sport and education. That it provides adults with a wide variety of classes means that people see the facility not just as a rugby league stadium, but as a community stadium which belongs to the town and of which it can be very proud. Indeed, in a recent survey, Wolves' fans said the community activities were the most important ones. When we think of what we have achieved without putting any silverware in the trophy cabinet—a situation, I hasten to add, that the Wolves will hope to change in 2006—that shows that sport can help a community and give it hope and vision for the future.
	I again thank my noble friend for initiating this debate. I stress how important it is to get people thinking about sport and playing sport, but, above all, appreciating the spirit of comradeship that should result from it.

Lord Carter of Coles: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for securing this debate on sport in the community in what, after all, has been a very dramatic 12 months for sport in this country. I should start by declaring an interest. I am chairman of Sport England, which was previously known as the English Sports Council, and am involved in a number of other sporting organisations such as UK Sport, the London Marathon Trust and the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games.
	Our success in winning the right to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was founded on our record of achievement at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and our demonstrable ability to deliver in a confident way major infrastructure projects such as Terminal 5 at Heathrow and, of course, the new national stadium at Wembley. We have discovered how to do these things. Our national confidence has been further enhanced by successes on the pitch such as that in the Ashes, at rugby and, I hope, in the World Cup next year.
	There is no doubt that, for these reasons, sport is on the national agenda in a way that it has never been previously. It receives more column inches; it is talked about; and it is seen as central to government policy. The achievements of our sportsmen and women are an inspiration to the whole nation. They are looked up to—mostly—and admired for what they do. They sit at the top of the sporting pyramid and comprise a relatively small cohort probably of between 1,000 and 2,000 people—no more than that. They are truly the elite. However, to maintain success, we have to continue to develop sport at the community level and think about how we serve the other 40 million of us who are not elite athletes. Without the foundations, we cannot produce the winning streak, as it were. We have to build the foundations to build up that elite body.
	Much has changed in recent years. Of course, sport begins in schools. In the past five years, an enormous effort has been made and great steps taken to redress the decline in participation in primary and secondary schools. We now need to ensure, as our children pass from secondary into further and higher education or directly into work, that pathways exist to sustain the level of participation in which we have invested so much time and effort.
	Community sport and the continued involvement of young people are based on creating this endowment at school level. It is an endowment on which they can draw for the 60-plus years of the rest of their lives. Regrettably, however, we have the worst drop-off rate in Europe when people leave compulsory education. This is a grave problem which we need to reverse by continuing to provide better information, better facilities, better coaching and stronger clubs. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, was right when he observed that we have had a plethora of initiatives. We have had "intitiativitis". We need and are working to bring about systemic change to meet our objectives. I think it is widely agreed that we need to do this because sport is clearly good for a number of reasons, the first of which is health. There is clear evidence now that an active person's lifetime healthcare costs are 35 per cent lower than those of an inactive person. We spend several billion pounds a year in this country on Avastatin and Lipitor to control cholesterol. If a little bit of that money were spent on sport, it may have some of the same benefits. We would benefit in education; we would benefit from reduced crime; and it would build cohesion in our communities.
	However, it must be made clear that we cannot over-promise. A series of initiatives, while they are attractive, is not yet delivering systemic change. But significant steps are being taken to find out how we can bring about this change. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, referred to the most important of them. He made it clear that we have not measured the results of our investment. This is now being rectified. We are putting systems in place across the country to measure the impact of what we do, to determine best practice and to determine what works. To support that objective, various systems have already been developed. The first to which I refer is a website called Active Places. This lists all the sports facilities in England. If noble Lords go to www.activeplaces.com, they will a find a sports centre near them, and all its attributes and activities will be described.
	As momentum has picked up in recent times, we have started to see more investment going into sport. Significantly, we have seen a large investment from the private sector, which is meeting market need. We have seen continued investment by some local authorities—but only some. Since sport is not part of the CPA, local authorities have often relegated sport to a very low point on their list of priorities. One London borough told me last week that it had 154 KPIs, of which sport was the 133rd. It is not yet in the right place. But we are continuing to invest. The Government, through the National Lottery and Exchequer funding, have invested more than £2 billion in recent years, and we have seen a renewal and expansion of our infrastructure. That is gradually becoming evident up and down the country. More needs to be done—of course, it always does—but the direction of travel is now right and the investment is going in.
	In a mixed economy, the diversity of provision is very important at the community level. We have some wonderfully imaginative local authorities, such as Hampshire, which have brought some very innovative products in. In the north of England, if anyone has the time to go to the Bolton Lads and Girls Club, it is a spectacular example of what voluntary work in this country can do. Of course, the independent sector—the David Lloyds and the Esportas—and companies growing out of local authority provision, such as Greenwich Leisure, are all making a tremendous contribution. On top of that are the governing bodies themselves, and I pay a particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for his work in the Football Foundation, which has been a shining example of a sport taking seriously its responsibility to the community. It is interesting to note the work of the Cricket Foundation, which will follow on from that. Collectively we have seen an investment of several billion pounds in recent years. The infrastructure is being put in place—and no doubt the Olympic pull factor will see more of that.
	On the next critical issue, which is that of coaching, having good buildings is worth nothing if you cannot transform people's performance within them. I acknowledge the work of my predecessor, Sir Trevor Brooking, who observed that the best way in which to keep people engaged in sport was to give them a good experience based on improving their skills. Therefore, access to high quality coaching is crucial. It is no good just letting people kick a ball around; we have to find a way in which to improve skills in every sport. In the past 12 months, 600 more coaches have gone into the system; by 2006–07, there will be a further 3,000 coaches, and we shall continue to build on that.
	There are a lot of key players in delivering community sport. I have mentioned local authorities, the private sector, the leisure providers and so on. What is interesting and striking in recent times is the increasing professionalism that has come into sport. Even in my short time in sport I can remember the spectre of men in blazers. Someone said to me last night that when you thought back to the image of rugby, you thought of fat blokes fighting in a field. People's concept of competition was of men and women running fast. Professionalism has come into the organisations. Management has been brought in to deal with the wall of money that has come through sponsorship, which has been dealt with very responsibly; and those management skills are being used not only to get money into the sport but to deploy it down to the community level, as organisations such as the Football Foundation are able to do.
	All our activity for sport after school comes together in the heartland of sport, which is the club system. Our nation's capacity to deliver winners is based on the unceasing and tireless activities of volunteers. Everything would collapse unless we had those volunteers—and last year we welcomed it particularly when the Chancellor incepted the Russell Commission, which looked into volunteering. It emerges that sport is the major volunteering activity, and moves are afoot to strengthen and build on that and to get some cohesion back into some communities through the efforts of people in those communities. Volunteering is the single greatest force in delivering community cohesion and inclusion. As other noble Lords have noted, the key is how we get it into the most deprived communities, which do not necessarily have the ability to self-organise—but showing the way can do that.
	We are seeing a fundamental change, based on management, directed investment and something systemic going on. But to move from the general to the specific, I want to share what happened to me yesterday evening, when I crossed the river to Lambeth—always rather a dangerous journey for a north Londoner. I was able to see and participate in one of the most exciting schemes that I have seen in many years. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, referred to it—it is called the Positive Future scheme, and it has been funded in the best way of good schemes, by a number of committed partners, including the Home Office, the Football Foundation and, to a lesser degree, Sport England. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, is not here to hear this—but it is a programme that is proved to work. Some 80,000 young people have been through these schemes, and I wish that noble Lords could have been with me last night to watch the confidence with which those young people performed. They were not professional; they were young people being shown the way to do things, whether it was to be coached to play football better or to street-dance. There were no divisions along the lines of gender or race, and I could see none along the lines of class. It was truly a melting pot that worked and which, above all, gave people that confidence. As I left, I thought that if I was thinking of developing yet another career, I would be privileged to go over there and be a talent manager for some of them, because it was absolutely fantastic.
	So what I wanted to report from the front line is that community sport is systematically being reformed. It started in schools, where much more investment is going. Rebuilding the community, as many people have said today, is going on apace. That does not mean we are doing enough—we certainly need to get a lot more done—but people's lives are being improved, and that is what this is all about. It is the power of sport reaching out to show people they can do things. It underpins our claims to be a great sporting nation and to be able to run the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics well—and, hopefully, subsequently to get the right to run the World Cup. This is an exciting time to be in sport. It is on the move at the community level, and will continue to deliver for this country.

Lord Addington: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, on securing this debate. This is one of those debates where, if you are to have any form of intellectual honesty, you cannot go into the trenches. We have realised that we have very similar goals regarding sport, we have established that there are certain ways we can achieve them, and the disagreement around them is minor.
	We had a system that effectively fell apart from the school level on up as a result of educational changes. This was unforeseen and unplanned, but it happened. However, the system was pretty rickety in the first place if a slight knock in the number of teaching hours could lead to a lack of recruitment. It was something that was waiting to happen, and indeed, by giving it a kick start, maybe the Conservative government of the 1980s can say, "At least we got things to change and move on into the modern world".
	The model of the school being the basic provider will not work any more. It was never that great, because it cut out choice. The idea that you were at a rugby, hockey, football or netball school—that was the school sport, and you did not play any others—was a disaster for participation. If you had a bad initial experience of sport, you stopped it. This happened for many people. Then we had an idea about taking things up later on in life.
	We have arrived at a situation where we are developing a more coherent system. All three major political parties have looked at their sports policy of late and come up with very similar answers, for the simple reason that we spoke to the same people. We said, "What are we going to do? We do not like x and y that happened before. There are holes in there—let's fill them in".
	We then come on to the debate itself. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, was wonderful, but it got me heartily cursing, because one of its major points was the fact that we have had lots of initiatives and there has been lots of activity, but there are questions about what has worked well and what has not. We have got to the point, and the Government can take some credit for this, where they have managed to create an environment—maybe through desperation; who knows?—where we have tried everything. Dozens of things are happening and different models are being brought forward from various sports, which all look rather similar, at least superficially. Which ones are delivering best, and which are not?
	We have a system where we are trying to create something similar. The problem is diversity. It depends on the sport. There has been a wonderful scheme lately with regard to cricket, but even that shows its limitations. It was said it would reach a third of all state schools, which is great for those schools—but what happens to the other two-thirds? That is one of the questions we must ask ourselves.
	The Government are now setting themselves a difficult new target. How do we get beyond the idea of an initial school age that produces cricketers, but then we fall away? That is a new and fundamental question about what we are trying to do. The difficult bit is a link between the clubs that are enthusiastic and those going outside. That is why finding out which of these schemes works best is the real challenge in front of us.
	The noble Lord, Lord Carter, has effectively been agreeing once again. There is a consensus of opinion about where we have to look to see what happens next. It is not what is to be done, but the best way to achieve it. We also have to address the thorny questions of political focus and resources.
	One of the most important changes in political attitudes, and hopefully one of the positive things that has been encouraged by the Olympics, is the fact that the Minister for public health is now meeting frequently with the Minister for Sport. I myself was annoyed by my own party, because it refused, as and when we get into power, theoretically to move sport into the Department of Health. Perhaps this was bureaucratic empire-building or whatever, but it was stopped. If we bring these two things together, sport then gets a high-spending champion in Whitehall that will allow it to go on.
	When the great playing-field debacle comes to the fore—when education authorities say, "We can do without a playing field; let us have one pitch. Let us sell the other off"—unless a school or an educational authority takes on board outside interests, it will probably say, "Yes, we can do that". They have to be stopped. If you are an educationalist whose priority is not, and has not been, sport, it is an absolute no-brainer that that is what will happen repeatedly. Unless someone says, "There are tremendous on-costs from doing that", that will happen.
	If we can encourage the whole of government from local government upwards to take sport more seriously and see it as beneficial and as something that is probably directly in line with their responsibility—health is an obvious aspect—we will have a more coherent approach. At the moment we are riding a wave of fashion and reaction against disaster, or near disaster. Unless we structurally embed further this wave of enthusiasm could disappear. If, for instance, the Olympics do not turn out to be quite the success we are hoping for, everyone will put up their hands and shriek, "We do not want to get involved". I hope that that does not happen; I simply put that forward as a possibility. Alternatively, if we have a couple of bad World Cup matches, politicians will stop wanting to be photographed with the man with the Cup. Let us face it, all parties are guilty of this. Unless we can institutionalise sport in the Government's structure from top to bottom, we shall be in danger of that happening.
	Politicians have to be pushed. My theory is that the average politician who likes sport soon discovers that it is not compatible with having to attend committee meetings and delivering leaflets. Thus, we are not the best informed group to ensure that we take sport seriously. We have to come to it late. We are the few people who do not look first at the back page of the newspapers—we look at the letters page on subjects other than how our football team performed. It is true, of course, that everyone who tries to be elected to office claims to be a great fan of their local football or rugby team, but how many of them could find the stadium without first looking at a map? I do not know. We must try to establish a more coherent approach and bring government together.
	Government must start to grasp another thorny branch. If we are to achieve an expansion in the number of those interested in sport, we must achieve an investment in sport. There is a finite number of times that we can go to the Lottery. Football is the best example. Eighty per cent of people who play football play it on public land. It is not like the other sports which traditionally buy their own grounds. Are we to expand the number of pitches to allow 10 per cent more people to play?
	Simply saying that you will better manage the time is a complete red herring because people have time to play sports only at certain times of the week. Traditionally, sport is played on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. A few artificial pitches or few more sets of floodlights may take the pressure off as regards training, but the fact is that teams will get together at weekends. Some may say, "We have a wonderful Wednesday afternoon league for X number of sports", and certain sports will have slightly different traditions, but the biggest participation in sport—and I have checked this—occurs at the weekend. If a pitch is overworked four times, you will not have that pitch for very long; you will have a mud bath. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, defined the game of rugby as fat men fighting in mud, or at least as fat men fighting—I object only to the "fat" part of that. The same will happen in football except that it will be thinner men who are falling around in the mud. Indeed, it will be a case of thinner young women falling around in mud as they will be playing on the same pitch if we do not increase the number of such pitches.
	We must ensure that resources are available. Do the Government plan to buy more pitches to allow people to participate in sport within their current recreation time frames? The alternative is to change the pattern of the working week and of our leisure time. I suggest to the Government that having a few more pitches would be much easier and cheaper. If the Government do not devote their attention to that approach, there are distinct limits on how far we can take participation. We have a great diversity of sports but we can take participation only so far in our present cultural environment, certainly in the medium term.
	In the minute or so which is left to me in which to speak I should like to ask one or two specific questions, or rather seek government guidance on how matters are developing. I believe that a private company is touting its sports hub programme round local education authorities. Under that programme a physical and aptitude assessment is carried out on children of school age to see which sport they might be best suited to physically and in terms of aptitude. To what extent is this programme or something like it being introduced in schools to ensure that people are encouraged to try the sports which they will enjoy, or at least stand a chance of enjoying? If we are to expand our base, we must go beyond what we have done traditionally.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, said that Warrington rugby club is encouraging members of the local community to try other sports. It would be too much to suggest that a rugby league club should encourage people to try playing rugby union, but that is a good example of someone being interested in one sport subsequently becoming interested in another. If you participate in a sport you may have time to take part in two or three sports at certain periods of your life. A top flight football player may not also play cricket, but someone who has a kick around with a Sunday morning football team may well play cricket during the summer. That level of participation and diversity of effort will ensure that participation rates are good.
	I could go on at great length, particularly stressing the fact that everything I have said applies also to women. Indeed, we will have achieved sporting equality when 51 per cent of sport participants comprise women. I believe that reflects the female percentage of the population. What are the Government's thoughts on the next stage? They are in the unusual position of experiencing a great deal of good will across the entire political spectrum in this regard. However, there is always a danger that that good will may be spent without achieving as much as it might.

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I feel a little timorous about speaking at this Dispatch Box today as I am still recovering from a very memorable evening at Admiralty House last night where I was the guest of none other than the Minister for Sport, Richard Caborn, and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell. However, I am sure that the Minister will be disappointed if I do not attempt to offer some constructive criticisms of Her Majesty's Government's performance regarding looking after sporting activity in the community. I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for once again initiating a debate on sport in your Lordships' House. This has been no less lively and informative than any previous debate on sport.
	The prospect of the Olympic Games in London in 2012 has served to focus public and parliamentary attention on the highest level of sporting achievement. However, this debate has proved a pertinent reminder that it is at grassroots level that investment of both time and money needs to be made in order to find athletes for tomorrow. We have established that sport plays a crucial role within communities, encouraging group participation, teaching new skills, breaking down barriers and encouraging a healthy way of living, all of which are essential in today's cultural climate. Sport teaches essential skills and values of life—teamwork, discipline, communication and self-confidence. It also instils a competitive spirit and drive. It can do that only if facilities and safe instruction are readily available.
	The Government are keen to promote sport as a means of reducing crime and obesity; so are we. They do much to highlight our sporting triumphs; for example, the bus tour of the victorious Ashes team. Yet, in reality, HMG has so far done little at grassroots level. The power of sport to influence those who find little else in life which appeals should not be underestimated. David Beckham, Jonny Wilkinson, Freddie Flintoff and Kelly Holmes—all sporting heroes—have far greater influence than merely within their own sport.
	A wide range of initiatives is needed to focus on those most likely to be disillusioned and least likely to take part in extracurricular sport—the economically disadvantaged groups, young people and ethnic minorities. The continuity between school and club sports seems still to be almost non-existent despite the efforts by school sport co-ordinator programmes to strengthen these links and despite efforts by my party when in government and by the current Government. The dropout rate at school leaving age is still alarming. The country needs to maintain a wider pool of across-the-board talent to compete on a world-class scale. Initiatives are needed to tackle motivational barriers such as time and cost as well as failures in provision; in particular of playing fields and sports grounds. It seems that a review of the usage of sports grounds is needed. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said just now, but I believe that the sharing of sports grounds should be more common, as should programming to maximise the amount of time that any facility is in use. That facility does not need to be a rugby pitch.
	We are told that overall number of participants in various sports have increased, but that the actual number of hours the average person spends exercising has decreased. For 2001 to 2004, DCMS had a public service agreement target to raise significantly, year on year, the average time spent on sport and physical activity by those aged five to 16. The DCMS annual report for 2003 admitted that the average amount of time spent on sport and physical activity by five to 16 year-olds had declined since 1999. Overall, 69 per cent of pupils in partnership schools participate in at least two hours of high-quality PE and school sport in a typical week. Therefore, even after four years of a school being in a partnership, 30 per cent of the pupils are not spending two hours a week on PE. It is difficult to see how the Government will reach the target of 75 per cent of all school pupils doing so by 2006 given that many schools are not yet part of a partnership. How do HMG intend to achieve that within the time frame that they have set themselves in their manifesto?
	Political correctness is now having a serious negative impact on young people in sport. For example, it is suggested that children should not play competitive games, because losing is demoralising. Dance teachers are frightened to touch pupils, which is essential for activities such as ballet where teachers are required to move pupils' limbs in order to change position and posture. Extracurricular activities such as Outward Bound are similarly declining in popularity. I declare an interest here, having led an Outward Bound team for two years in the services, in which time we took 850 young men a term into the mountains and to the rivers. That decline is in part due to the growth of a compensation culture in UK schools. Schools and clubs are frightened to take youngsters away from home, or to encourage them to try new activities where risk may be involved, such as riding a horse or rock-climbing, for fear of being sued. In 2003, one child died as a result of an incident on a school visit. But more than 7 million children went on school visits that year.
	There is concern that people who act with reasonable care and skill could be held liable for untoward incidents, which will be a disincentive for teachers and parents to accept roles of responsibility and make insurance almost impossible. I had that debate with Richard Caborn last night, and he is very concerned to try to find a way out of it. The ratio of adults to children in different age groups should be kept under constant review and is spelt out in the guide to good practice. However, the review process should ensure that the opportunity for young people to participate in all sorts of sports and outdoor activities is not restricted.
	Added to the dilemmas raised by health and safety and political correctness are those of bureaucracy and complicated paperwork. The Government announced on 16 September 2005 that from 1 April 2006 a one-stop approach to high-performance sport would be created by transferring full responsibility for its funding and development to UK Sport. The Independent Sports Review by my noble friend Lord Moynihan and Kate Hoey produced a report, Raising the Bar, which considers that the Government's plan to shift responsibility for world-class development to UK Sport does not go far enough.
	On another front, having improved the lot of CASCs by giving mandatory rate relief at 80 per cent if they are registered as a charity, the Government have now landed them with the Licensing Act, which has increased costs and caused further confusion. Maldon Cricket Club, when asked about the impact of the Licensing Act, replied that there are two types of cost—financial and time—and went through how they add up. The cost of the licence was £100, plus a £70 annual charge, so the total cost so far has been a minimum of 15 hours spent and £384, and the club has still not yet been told whether it has a licence. The regulatory impact assessment accompanying the regulations estimates that about 20,000 non-profit-making members' clubs would be affected by the new fees. Many clubs will lose a valuable source of revenue as they will not apply for the expensive new licence.
	The Government rhetoric about investment in community sport sounds positive, but the reality of the figures is shocking. In 2000, the Government pledged to invest £750 million of lottery money into school and community sport as part of a £1 billion investment over three years—fantastic. That was supposed to be joined-up government, including the departments responsible for health, education, crime and drugs. I wonder whether the Home Office, the Department of Health or the Department for Education and Skills got the message. Updated figures revealed on 6 June 2005 show that still only £70.4 million of the £750 million has been spent, although £620 million has now been committed—I believe as a result of the current Minister for Sport's boot being used in the right direction.
	The managerial costs of the various sports bodies are phenomenally high. Raising the Bar reveals that the administration costs for Sport England in 2003–04 accounted for 30 per cent of its £52.5 million budget, whereas the Millennium Commission kept its overheads to 4 per cent. Nearly £14 million was spent on consultancy costs, administration for the regional sports boards and staff costs for the regional sports councils. The English Institute of Sport—the EIS—cost £120 million to establish and had £7.9 million in administration costs in 2003–04 and £8.5 million in the most recent tax year. The new Sports Foundation proposed by Raising the Bar would review the assets of the EIS, incorporate the services that are in demand and discontinue the others. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that those figures are truly shocking. What are the Government going to do to reduce that bureaucratic waste?
	Sport in the community is being hindered at every move by new restrictive government legislation, health and safety and political correctness. The point of increasing the amount of sport in the curriculum is to encourage group participation, exploration and confidence, none of which can be achieved if all risk is removed. Whether it is the local football team or our Olympic athletes, sport can draw together a wide spectrum of diverse people and focus their energies into a channelled direction. Without the challenge of team sports and the adrenaline of outdoor activities such as caving and mountaineering, there is little to attract people away from their computer games and television sets. None of these activities need be high risk as long as the coaches or group leaders are properly trained.
	In summary, community sport has of recent times been in the doldrums, the major issues being an over-bureaucratic approach by government, which makes the routes to funding difficult; political correctness; and overbearing health and safety regulations creating a culture of claims and fear by those responsible—something which I know the Government and we are keen to remove. Added to that is the eternal problem of maintaining young people's interest in sport and outdoor activities after they leave school. The crossover from school to club is still desperately in need of a support mechanism. The great outdoors and community sport have so much to offer to all of us, and it must be the duty of all governments to maximise those assets.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Pendry for introducing the second debate that we have had on sport in a matter of months, thanks to his diligence and his good fortune with regard to ballots. We have very much enjoyed this debate today which has given a good airing to the issues of community sport.
	Last time when I spoke at this Dispatch Box I looked forward with some optimism towards a summer of success. This was in June, when we had not made a great deal of progress with regard to the Ashes, which is certainly a success. Nor had we succeeded in landing the Olympic bid—in fact the House was suffused with a certain gloomy reluctance to expect us to host it but a couple of weeks later we duly succeeded. If I am more optimistic than some contributors to this debate, I hope that the House will recognise that it is on the basis that the last time I spoke here, optimism proved to be fully justified.
	There are real issues that we need to confront and I am grateful to my noble friend for having introduced them. I share with him the sentiment that building upon success, the Government's approach towards a feasibility study for that rather long-distance event, the World Cup soccer finals in 2018, ought to start now because it helps us to prepare the ground. As we know from the Olympic bid, you cannot start too early and you cannot over-prepare when bidding for success against other rival countries for such events. However we are looking at making some progress towards a bid which does not have to be tabled until 2011, so that is a somewhat more distant horizon.
	Although we are talking about community sport, national sport acts as a role model for so much stimulus for activity at a local level. It is the heroes—the Kelly Holmeses and the Andrew Flintoffs of this world—who inspire our young people. These people—who are sometimes castigated in the press if they fall short of impeccable behaviour—are nevertheless role models. As such they are important to young people and that is why we enjoin them to concentrate upon their sporting success and not let us down with rather less attractive behaviour, either in their sport at times or elsewhere. Role models are important to young people and our sporting heroes are bound to play an important part in that. That is why sport has such significance.
	I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said. It was an important counteraction to those of us who enthuse about sport to remind us that there can be a downside; there is no aspect of human activity which does not have its downside as well as its heights. I took on board his comments. Certain aspects of sport may not be wholly beneficial to society. But even the noble Lord identified—perhaps grudgingly, whereas others did so more enthusiastically—the extent to which sport can play a part in bringing communities together. It can produce a sense of identity and can certainly open up opportunities for young people.
	My noble friend Lord Giddens was concerned to establish a relationship between sport and society. But one difficulty with regard to sport is that the relationship between education and skills is still poorly developed in this country. Over many generations we have over-emphasised academic success and have downplayed skills. That has been apparent in a whole range of areas of national life, and it also impacts on sport. After all, sport is the cultivation of skills, but our education system has not concentrated enough on developing it as an area of opportunity in which young people can excel.
	I shall respond to one or two individual points that were raised during the debate. I assure my noble friend Lord Pendry that access to water is more a responsibility of Defra than it is of my own department, but we have drawn Defra's attention to the access of canoeists. Given the Olympic Games, that will be important as we hope to develop skills in that area to a higher level than we have done in the past, and we hope to be successful. We recognise that whereas in Scotland access to water is more regularly granted, there is a tension between the angling community and all other users of water, and we are keen to develop policy in this area.
	The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, reminded us that there are sports other than competitive, organised and team sports. He made a very important contribution to the debate. We all recognise that walking accounts for the largest amount of exercise taken by people in this country, and the noble Lord also identified mountaineering, rock climbing and fell walking as other activities.
	I heard what the noble Lord said about risk. That was reinforced to a degree by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, who laid a rather heavy emphasis on political correctness. Perhaps I may make the obvious point. We all want young people to be faced with a challenge but we are all distraught when that challenge results in calamity. When mistakes are made in leadership so that children are exposed to being swept away in mountains because they have not been sufficiently supervised, or when people are taken out canoeing and disaster occurs because the leadership has not recognised the threats, or even, as the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, mentioned, when swimming coaches ill-treat their charges, of course there will be a community response and of course we will be concerned. That may be defined in disparaging terms as political correctness, but we expect our young people to participate in a sporting environment in which they are guaranteed to benefit from additional skills and exercise; we do not expect them to be placed in a position of vulnerability, which can ruin young lives. So a balance has to be struck.
	My noble friend Lord Grantchester raised the important issue of the relationship between professional and community sport. There is no doubt that, whatever government do, the hugely vast resources that obtain in certain areas of professional sport because of the attractiveness of that sport to television rights and resources do play a part in enhancing community facilities.
	My noble friend Lord Grantchester gave evidence about Everton Football Club's community scheme. That was reinforced by my noble friend Lord Hoyle, who emphasised what a wonderful success Warrington represented in terms of its community scheme, and its triumph in the national appreciation of those efforts. I have no doubt that, just as the heroes are the people on the pitch, the facilities also have a glamour. I do not think that any young person who gets the chance, at however low a level, to play once—or appear in a starring capacity—at their local Premier League or rugby club stadium, does not get a thrill from that experience. Those experiences stimulate young people to participate, so our facilities are important. Of course, national facilities of those kinds quite rightly have to be supplemented, and are only a fraction of those which we need to provide at local community level. There is no doubt, however, that these national facilities represent the power of sport, which is a motivational pull bringing a large number of our people into sport.
	I was glad that my noble friend Lord Giddens asked me what we are doing about matching the United States in the increasingly active role played by women in sport. I am happy to tell him that he is right: the fastest growing sport for women in the United States is soccer. That is also true in the United Kingdom. The growth of women's soccer is of very real significance to us, because it helps to put young men and women—boys and girls—on an equal footing in their enthusiasm for what is still the major national sport. We commend that.
	The noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, raised the virtues of sport in a convincing way. I know from his sporting background that he is going to be one of the most enthusiastic contributors to any debate on sport. He did not let us down today. He raised one or two issues regarding city academies and their use. That is something which we need to address. City academies have significant facilities. The noble Lord is right that in one or two cases—not many—there are problems in making these facilities available to the wider community because of where VAT cuts in. The Government are actively seeking a way to resolve that. We would certainly not see city academies fulfilling the role which we expect them to play in the community if we did not get past barriers of that kind.
	My noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen spoke of cricket and its significance to women. We welcome the Chance to Shine scheme to which she referred, which seeks to improve competitive cricket in schools. It is already having a significant effect, and it needs to. If there has been one feature of this very significant sport over the past three decades or so, it has been the decline of school cricket.
	The noble Lord, Lord Addington, emphasised the question of the nature of facilities. The Government have put a stop to the sale of school playing fields. We are, however, committed to recognising that we can, at times, produce better facilities—of an indoor, covered type—than existing playing fields. We are eager to do that.
	In particular, we are exploring a number of options in which there could be a government contribution to the Cricket Foundation scheme, to which my noble friend Lady Massey referred.
	On the general issues that were raised with regard to community participation, the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said that the Government had an ambitious target of ensuring that young people have two hours of sport outside the curriculum or PE. That ambitious target is 75 per cent; it is 65 per cent at the present time. The noble Lord is right. It is a tough target. There is not much point in the Government setting targets unless they require activity and appraisal. I am confident about achieving that target in 2006. I do not underestimate the challenge that it represents, but I am sufficiently convinced of the momentum that we are building up on this issue.
	If we are to tackle the wider issues, to which noble Lords referred, that sport is important to the health of the nation, particularly in tackling obesity and ensuring exercise, we must build the recognition in schools that greater emphasis must be placed on exercise and the opportunities for sport than has obtained recently.
	The debate has covered a wide range of areas. I heard what my noble friend Lord Giddens said about the evaluation of the multifarious nature of these schemes. That is an important aspect, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Carter who delineated clearly the extent to which we recognise our obligation to know value for money and the effectiveness of programmes.
	Giving support to sport, as my noble friend Lord Carter identified, is no easy matter. Sport is more varied than almost any other recipient of government resource. We have to relate so much to the volunteer aspect in sport. Without voluntary contributions in sport we would be at a loss to provide anything like the facilities that we have at community level. We all know that the vast contribution to almost any sports club comes not from professional resources but from people who are prepared to give up their valuable time in what is often that stultifying role of bureaucracy— the usual despicable phrase that we use whenever there is something that we do not want to do. Administration and bureaucracy are important to every activity in sport. There is a vast difference between a rugby club with 12 or 15 sides to be organised and a small table tennis club with two or three sides and limited facilities because resources are so much more limited. I assure the House that table tennis clubs are as assertive in their demands to the body with which my noble friend Lord Carter is involved, as are rugby, cricket or soccer clubs.
	It is the variety of sport and the extent to which we have to work with the grain of local participation and commitment that makes funding difficult. I accept the charge identified by my noble friend Lord Giddens. Let us get better value for money and identify what works and what does not. Let us also not underestimate the challenge that that represents to us all, given the sheer variety of sport, and the fact that we have to relate crucially to a huge amount of volunteer participation. It is that voluntary participation that stands this country in very good stead.
	Of course we should be concerned about high achievement. That could not be otherwise at the moment, when anyone who follows sport has their eyes on next year's World Cup, and our preparation for the Olympic Games in this country in a few years' time. We cannot have such perspectives without being keen for high achievement. However, we also need to look at community sport, to encourage more of our young people to participate in sport, and to continue to sustain their interest past the crucial break. This is an educational, as much as a sporting, issue. Young people drop out of education at the age of 16 in far greater numbers than in any other advanced country. At the same time they turn their backs on institutionalised sport, sport having been provided for them only at school. That has to change; we must bridge these problems with greater success in the future. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Pendry for introducing a debate that has helped to clarify the issues and advance the cause.

Lord Pendry: My Lords, I said at the beginning of this debate that noble Lords would give due recognition to those who do so much for sport in the community. We have had outstanding contributions from many, if not all, noble Lords who spoke. I believe that Parliament, and this House in particular, is at its best when debating issues such as sport—long may that prevail.
	I will not be able to respond to everyone but I say to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that I am glad he follows some of my thinking about the importance of rural sport. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, always brings in his beloved Everton and, rightly, the particular work it does within the community. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, always begins his speeches with his customary humour, though today he then became very serious—so much so that I began to wonder which side he was on. Then he came through and I agree with much of what he said and the points he made to the Minister.
	The noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, coming as he does from South Africa—a great sporting nation—clearly has a great passion for sport and that came through in his speech. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, made a great point about cricket—she was a Lancashire cricket captain—talking to the House about the importance of Chance to Shine. I also serve on the Cricket Foundation and it is doing much there. What she did not say is that, while it is a scheme for state schools, there is also a great link between public and state schools in this scheme. Public schools are opening many of their playing fields to state school cricket teams, which I think is very commendable. The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, always bangs the drum for Warrington, where he was a Member of Parliament for many years, and is very much concerned about sport in that area. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, made very forceful speeches and I hope they will be read by those who follow our debates on sport.
	As Opposition spokesperson, the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, has to put his party's point of view. Nevertheless, as a great Olympian himself he has a great passion for sport and that came through. I say to the Minister that I am very pleased he replied in the way he did and answered the points that were put to him. I would very much appreciate that sort of contribution outside the House some time, about some of the issues he and I feel very strongly about. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Asylum (Designated States) (No. 2)Order 2005

Lord Bassam of Brighton: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 24 October be approved [8th Report from the Joint Committee].

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the subject that we are dealing with today will be familiar to noble Lords from debates on previous orders that added countries to the list of countries to which the non-suspensive appeal provisions in Section 94 of the Nationality, Asylum and Immigration Act 2002 apply; this is the fourth order. There is currently a total of 14 countries on the list, added between April 2003 and February 2005, and the order would add to the list, first, Mongolia and, secondly, Ghana and Nigeria in respect of male applicants only.
	Before moving on to the specific additions of Ghana, Mongolia and Nigeria, noble Lords may find it helpful if I briefly recall the main elements of the non-suspensive appeals process. An unsuccessful asylum or human rights claim made by a person entitled to reside in a designated state will be certified as clearly unfounded unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claim is not clearly unfounded. The effect of a clearly unfounded certificate is that there will be no in-country right of appeal against the refusal of the claim; the right of appeal will be exercisable only from outside the United Kingdom.
	Section 94 of the Nationality, Asylum and Immigration Act contains a provision to add countries to the list by affirmative order, but only where the Secretary of State is satisfied that there is, in general, no serious risk of persecution of persons entitled to reside in that country, and that removal to that country of an individual entitled to reside there would not, in general, breach the United Kingdom's obligations under the ECHR.
	In considering the addition of these countries to the list of designated countries, we have taken this legal test as the starting point. We have also taken full account of the country of origin information that we publish. We are satisfied that Mongolia meets this test. Looking a little more closely at the situation in Ghana and Nigeria, while we are satisfied that the test is met in relation to males entitled to reside in those countries, we are not satisfied that the test is met in respect of women at the present time. In both countries, the evidence suggests that currently women are not able to access the level of protection from the state that is necessary in order for the legal test to be satisfied in respect of women.
	Inclusion on the list reflects a general level of safety for those to which it applies, not a total absence of any mistreatment. We are not saying that any of these three countries, or any of the 14 other countries on the list, is safe for everyone. No country would meet that test. We are saying that Mongolia is safe for most people, and Ghana and Nigeria are safe for most men.
	As inclusion on the list reflects a general level of safety, not a total absence of mistreatment, we continue to give every asylum and human rights claim from a resident of a designated country full consideration on its individual merits. A claim would not be refused or certified as clearly unfounded unless we were satisfied, after individual consideration, that the claim fell to be refused and certified.
	In considering the addition of these countries, we took into account our published country of origin information material and consulted the independent advisory panel on country information on that material. At the panel's meeting in September 2005, the information on these countries was considered and the panel found it to be an accurate and balanced representation of the source material and country conditions. Noble Lords may ask why we are proposing the addition of these countries at this time. While we are committed to providing a safe haven to genuine refugees and others who require our protection, we are determined to continue to tackle abuse of our asylum system.
	The powers under the 2002 Act have resulted in a significant cut in the number of asylum applications from the countries listed previously. For example, the intake of new applications from those countries that were designated in the 2002 Act—the then 10 EU accession countries—fell by 97 per cent from October 2002 to April 2004 when the states concerned became members of the EU and the non-suspensive appeals designation effectively ended. That compared with an overall fall in intake of 70 per cent over the same period.
	For the countries that were added to the list on 1 April 2003—Albania, Bulgaria, Jamaica, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania and Serbia and Montenegro—intake fell by 83 per cent from March 2003 to September 2005. Overall intake fell by 51 per cent in this period. There was a similar and very significant fall in intake from those countries added to the list on 23 July 2003—namely, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Ukraine. Intake from those countries fell by 66 per cent from June 2003 to September 2005, with the overall intake during that period falling by 39 per cent. Those figures exclude Bangladesh, which was removed from the designated list on 22 April 2005. With regard to India, which was added to the list on 15 February this year, intake fell by 46 per cent from March 2005 to September 2005, with the overall intake during that period falling by 1 per cent.
	We argue that these figures show how effective the non-suspensive appeal powers are and that they are making a significant contribution to our overall asylum strategy. We believe that the addition of these further three countries—Mongolia and, in respect of men, Ghana and Nigeria—will further prevent failed asylum-seekers attempting to frustrate their removal from the United Kingdom by unnecessarily prolonging the appeals process. Designating a country for the purposes of non-suspensive appeals provides a disincentive for people with no genuine protection needs misusing the asylum process. That leads to enhanced public confidence in the overall asylum system, a reduction in intake, a speeding-up of the process and a consequent releasing of resources which can be used to improve performance in other areas.
	This order is a sensible and measured step towards the increased use of non-suspensive appeals. I beg to move.
	Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 24 October be approved [8th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)

Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, the noble Lord has told the House that the legal test for designation is met in respect of men, but not yet in respect of women in Ghana and Nigeria. I understand that the evidence suggests that women are at risk for a variety of reasons, including the horrific practice of female genital mutilation, trafficking, domestic violence and forced marriage. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that great care is taken to ensure that women are not put in a position in which they are sent back to places where such things can happen to them. Female genital mutilation is very much disliked in this House and next week we have an Unstarred Question on this very subject. We all feel horrified by the whole practice. I should be grateful if the Minister could assure me on that point. We have 14 countries with the addition of three. In how many countries do women meet the same criteria as men?

Lord Avebury: My Lords, the proposition that certain states should be designated as intrinsically unlikely to persecute anyone on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and that it is reasonable to deny a person making such a claim a right of appeal, made us uneasy when it was first advanced by the Tory government in the Asylum and Immigration Bill 1996. At that time, we were supported by the Labour Party in arguing that it violated the principle that applicants for asylum should all be treated in the identical manner.
	As I said in 1996, if certain countries are singled out as places where there is, in general, no serious risk of persecution, it is put into the minds of the officials who deal with applications from citizens of those countries that the cases before them are likely to be bogus, which will subconsciously influence their decisions. The statistical evidence would be the number of applicants from designated states granted asylum or other forms of leave to remain by officials of the IND before and after designation. If the proportion of successful applications fell, there would be a strong prima facie case for saying that the reduction was an artefact of the designation and had nothing to do with the merits of the applications.
	Ghana is interesting because it was on the Tory safe list in 1996. It came off in 1999 when the Labour Government effectively re-enacted the 1996 Act power to designate countries as safe, but with a new list that did not include Ghana. Between 1996 and 1999, 25 persons from Ghana were granted asylum on their initial application. In 2000, that figure shot up to 40 and, in 2001, it was 50. Your Lordships may think that taking Ghana off the safe list had some influence on those figures.
	In the debates on the then Immigration and Asylum Bill in 1999, Lord Williams of Mostyn did not seek to justify the departure from what had always been one of the main planks of asylum policy on grounds of principle. His case was that the four countries being designated—Canada, Norway, Switzerland and the United States—were manifestly safe and that the Secretary of State's certification that in each case it was safe to remove a person to one of the countries designated was subject to judicial review. After the appalling evidence that we have had of ill treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, I am not sure whether Lord Williams of Mostyn, if he had still been with us, would have maintained his position about the safety of the United States. That shows how rapidly conditions in a particular country can change.
	The noble Lord mentioned Bangladesh, which is another illustration of the fragile nature of any such list. It was added in 2003 and two years later it had to be removed, after the accumulation of a weight of evidence of repression and physical attacks on religious, ethnic and secular minorities and the official opposition, including on 21 August 2004, the attempted assassination of the leader of the opposition, Sheik Hasina, when 24 people were killed and scores were seriously injured.
	I am not saying that conditions in the three countries now to be added are anything like those in Bangladesh; only that circumstances may change rapidly. The Explanatory Memorandum says that there have been some grants of asylum and of discretionary leave to remain to applicants from each of the countries that we are looking at. As the noble Lord has acknowledged, the risks are not zero. I work it out that 110 people were allowed to stay in 2004 and the first half of 2005, but we are not told whether the grants were made on application or on appeal. I hope that we can have that information: I gave the Minister notice that I would ask for those figures. If the successes were all on appeal, we have to acknowledge that 60 or 70 people a year will be sent back to these countries in circumstances where they would have been allowed to stay if they had retained the right of appeal which is now being taken away from them.
	We are not told what the relative experiences of men and women applicants have been in the cases of Ghana and Nigeria, even though we are now being asked to differentiate between men and women applicants from those two countries. I can understand that there may well be circumstances in which women are more likely to have a genuine fear of persecution. The Home Office told the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association that the reasons for limiting the designation in this way were, as the noble Baroness said, the three problems of trafficking, domestic violence and female genital mutilation. The Country of Origin Information Service's report on Ghana quotes reports which indicate that widespread violence is perpetrated against women there, even though it has a Ministry of Women's and Children's Affairs and active women's NGOs. However, they have to contend with traditional practices and social norms that discriminate against women and deny them their statutory rights. In that cultural atmosphere, it would be surprising if women did not have some reason to fear persecution or, at least, to fear that they were not being given sufficient protection by the government against non-state agents of persecution.
	In the case of Nigeria, I wonder what,
	"information material relied on by the Secretary of State",
	was considered by the advisory panel as an accurate and objective representation of conditions there, because there is no report on the Country of Origin Information Service website. We were very much in favour of the institution of the advisory panel, but it is not a substitute for scrutiny by Parliament of the evidence on which the Secretary of State relies. If the Minister is going to reply that it was the Nigeria report by the old Country Information and Policy Unit on which he relied, that document considered the position up to 1 March this year, and a lot could have changed since then. These reports were supposed to be updated every six months, but they quite often missed the deadline. It is a pity if the new COIS, which is replacing the CIPU, has started off on the same footing, particularly so when it must have been well aware that we were going to look at the information as a result of this order coming before Parliament.
	The CIPU report does not mention the problems faced by women under the Sharia law in some Nigerian states. I wonder if the advisory panel had any comment on this omission. There were two cases in Bauchi State in 2004 in which a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, although in both cases the conviction and the sentence were quashed on appeal. But women are at risk as long as this cruel and unusual punishment is mandatory for the offence of zina, or adultery.
	The Centre for Islamic Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in northern Nigeria has published a very useful study, Promoting Women's Rights through Sharia in Northern Nigeria. The study was supported by DfID and the British Council. The report states that some traditional practices that are harmful to women, such as forced early marriage, have been shown to be un-Islamic. But on the question of zina, the study looks only at whether pregnancy should be treated as proof of the offence, and makes no comment on the mandatory punishments, which I understand are laid down in the Qur'an, of 100 lashes for unmarried offenders, and of stoning to death for married offenders. Nor could the authors of the study agree on the way in which evidence of pregnancy should be dealt with by the Sharia courts—a matter which they referred to the ulama, or Muslim clergy, for a final ruling. There is nothing in either the Qur'an or the Sunna to indicate that the court should consider whether the woman was a voluntary participant in the sexual act which led to her pregnancy.
	So in theory a woman who is raped and who becomes pregnant as a result of being a victim of rape may nevertheless be subject to that penalty, because there is no mens rea involved in the proof. Sentences of that kind have indeed been carried out, even on minors, in other countries, where the hadd offences apply. Clearly any woman at risk of being convicted of zina would have a good case for being granted asylum. I agree with the noble Lord's presentation in the sense that women, in the areas where the sharia law applies, may have a much better case for applying for asylum than men.
	On a more general point, this is the first time that we have singled out a particular group as subject to risk of persecution in a country that is otherwise seen to be safe for the majority of the population. That prompts a question whether the Home Office has considered the position of women in other countries which are already designated, as the noble Baroness said, and whether that power—it allows designation by reference not only to gender but to language, race, religion, nationality, membership of a social or other group, political opinion or any other attribute or circumstances that the Secretary of State believes appropriate—has been considered in relation to other characteristics apart from gender. The obvious example is sexual orientation, since it is well known that gays are targeted for harassment and violence in Jamaica, in particular. Stonewall and the National Secular Society have both expressed concern to me on that subject and asked me to raise it this afternoon.
	May we have an assurance that when any new state is added to the designation list, there is a review by the COIS of the treatment by that state of its gay population and a recommendation on whether it should be exempted from designation? In particular, would the Government now carry out an assessment of the seven pages in the current COIS report on Jamaica, dealing with the precarious situation of gays in that country with a view to varying the existing designation?
	As I said earlier, Lord Williams of Mostyn said that the Secretary of State had to certify that it was safe for each individual to be sent back to a designated state to be treated in a certain way. Could the Minister tell us, in each of the states already listed, how many applications there have been in each of the years 2002 to 2004, and in 2005 up to the latest convenient date, and how many of those in each case have not been certified? If the Minister cannot give the figures this afternoon, perhaps he could undertake to place them in the Library. When the cases have been certified, how many have been the subject of judicial review and how many applications for judicial review have been successful? If the Minister could give that information country by country, it would be very useful for practitioners.
	The Immigration Law Practitioners' Association—ILPA—has already asked me to inquire whether, when a woman arrives in the UK with a man who is, for instance, her husband or another close relative, she will be alerted to the fact that if she is the primary claimant there will be no certification. The association also suggested that when someone from a designated country has been granted refugee status in the past, a close family member applying after designation should not normally be certified. I would be grateful for an answer on that point as well.
	When the idea of safe states was first introduced by the Tories in 1996, we feared that it would undermine the principle that every individual application should be considered on its own merits. Coupled with the practice of fast-tracking the citizens of those states though Oakington, their chances of success in the exceptional cases when there is merit in the application are greatly diminished. As ILPA pointed out, those cases are likely to require specialist advice and information, which is not going to easily be assembled in the few days that they spend in Oakington. We understand, however, that designation is here to stay, and the best that we can do as an opposition is to ensure that it operates as fairly as possible. I hope that the Government will pay careful attention to the points that we have raised, and will let us and the practitioners have answers as soon as possible.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, as ever, I am grateful to both noble Lords who have contributed to this short discussion. In particular, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, for her short questions. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will have to bear with me while I go through his rather more complicated and discursive commentary on the issue. I take note, however, that, although the noble Baroness and the noble Lord have a different take on the order, at least the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, recognises the validity of the process we are engaged in. It is important, even if he does not entirely agree with its detail. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her general agreement.
	To answer the noble Baroness's question, we are confident that in all 14 countries women are protected in the way we set out in our criteria. We stand by that, and we think it is undoubtedly the case. With regard to perhaps the more important question the noble Baroness asked, whether we would return women to face female genital mutilation or other serious human rights abuses: of course we would not. It is for that reason, because of our concerns, that we have drafted the order in the way that we have for Ghana and Nigeria. If we considered if there was a genuine and active risk that a young girl or a woman would experience female genital mutilation or other serious human rights abuses, we would not return them to that country. The risks that women may face of genital mutilation or other forms of mistreatment in Nigeria and Ghana, as I have said, caused us to designate these countries in respect of men only, as described in the order.
	The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, made some interesting general points. I ought to place on record that I am grateful to him for giving me notice of his questions in particular. I cannot promise to answer his questions with all the precise details this afternoon, but I will attempt to go through some of it. I will undertake to cover the more detailed points he asked me about and provide them in writing, place a copy of that in the Library of the House and share it with the Opposition Front Bench.
	The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, started with his point about Labour's position in 1996. My response is simply that things have changed since then. We have had to take important steps to gain greater control over the asylum and immigration processes in the UK. I guess the realities of being a government and having made hard choices have had an impact on us. We have to deal with the reality as we find it, not as we would have wished it to be. That said, experience in opposition and our approach to matters of human rights generally, and to ensuring that we have a fair and reasonable process for processing asylum applications, have figured large in our policy. We have taken great care in framing the legislation in the way that we have so that it is fair and reasonable, even if at times it appears to be hard-nosed, because that is how we believe it should be approached.
	I want to work through the points in the noble Lord's note to me, which was based on issues raised with him by ILPA. Referring to the noble Lord's questions is probably the best way. He asked how many people from Mongolia, Ghana and Nigeria have been recognised as refugees in the past three years. I have some statistics on that, relating to appeals outcomes determined by the Immigration Appellate Authority. For Ghana in 2004 there were 10 appeals allowed. As I see it, none was allowed in 2005. For Nigeria, in 2004 there were 40 appeals allowed, which is 4 per cent. I should say that the figure of 10 represents 2 per cent. For the three-quarters of 2005 for which we have records, a total of 25 appeals was allowed in Nigeria. In Mongolia, in 2004 there were 10; and for the three-quarters of 2005 reported on in Mongolia, five appeals were allowed. If the noble Lord wishes, I can give a male and female breakdown of that. However, if he is content to receive it in correspondence, I will happily provide it in that form. The noble Lord nods his assent.
	The noble Lord then asked how many were recognised as refugees at the initial Home Office decision stage and how many on appeal. I have provided figures for appeal. On initial decision, in 2004 there were five grants of asylum for Ghana; for Mongolia, there were five; and for Nigeria there were five. The corresponding data for 2005 is zero in all three cases. So far as asylum and human rights applications from Ghana and Nigeria are concerned, I can provide a breakdown by gender for 2004. In both Ghana and Nigeria, there were five grants of asylum to females. So far as our records indicate, none has been recorded this year. The noble Lord also asked for a breakdown of applications and decisions by gender for Ghana and Nigeria. I believe that I have provided that data, and I shall happily furnish the noble Lord with the pieces of paper that relate to them.
	The noble Lord asked about how Nigerian and Ghanaian women coming to the UK with men are alerted by the Home Office to the presumption of certification that will operate. All dependents of asylum seekers are advised that they can apply for asylum in their own right. It is perfectly possible to be both a dependent and an asylum seeker at the same time. For example, if a wife's asylum claim was successful but her husband's was not, the husband could stay as the dependent of his wife.
	The noble Lord also asked whether, having taken the step of using powers to certify some but not all claims from a country, the Home Office would undertake to review all the countries on the designated list and consider refining its certification of claims from those countries. We keep the list of designated countries under review. We consider that all 14 of the countries presently on the list continue to meet the test for designation—the point that I made earlier to the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe—taking account of the conditions for all residents across the whole country. Therefore, we do not consider that any changes are required to be made at present.
	The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked whether the Home Office could say what percentage of claims from each of the countries on the designated list have not been certified in the past three years and could provide figures for the numbers of certified and non-certified cases. The proportion of refusals of asylum that have been certified across the current 14 listed states in the first nine months of this year is approximately two-thirds. The certification rate varies from country to country. This reflects the findings of the High Court that the IND treats each case on its merits and certifies an individual claim only where it is justified in individual circumstances.
	The noble Lord's next point was whether the Home Office would confirm that it would not be appropriate to certify the claims of family members when members of the family whose claims are further advanced in the process have already been recognised as refugees. It is unlikely but not impossible that one family member's claim could lead to refugee status while another had a clearly unfounded claim, for example, where they were of different nationalities. As I mentioned earlier, the spouse of a refugee could remain as a dependant of their spouse. The same is, of course, true of dependent children of a refugee.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, I made a slightly different point. My point was that if a person had been granted asylum prior to the designation, and another family member enters the country after designation, would the Secretary of State refrain from certifying the latecomer in view of the fact that his close relative had been granted asylum before the designation came into effect?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I suspect that it would depend on the more precise details of the case. I understand the point that the noble Lord makes but it would be wrong of me to prescribe what would happen in each set of circumstances. However, the important point is that each case must be judged on its merits. The circumstances that the noble Lord described may well result in the outcome which practitioners seek. However, it is hard to be precise without a case and all the considerations to be taken into account in front of one.
	The noble Lord made a number of other points, one of which related to fast track processes. The fast track processes that we operate have been found to be fair by the courts. We do not accept that persons having their claims determined at Oakington, for example, do not receive a fair hearing; we believe that they do and the courts have upheld that position. As I explained earlier, all claims are considered on their individual merits, whether or not the claimants are residents of a designated state. In that context it is worth adding that we keep states on the list under constant review but do not think that partial designation rather than full designation is appropriate for the states currently on the list. We are happy with the designations contained in this order.
	The noble Lord referred to Jamaica. We have to make it clear that Jamaica is entitled to pass the laws that it does, whatever our personal views on that may be. While homosexual acts are illegal in Jamaica, we do not believe that means that the country as a whole does not meet the general test, nor that partial designation would be appropriate, as it is for the two states we are adding to the list today. Clearly, the point that the noble Lord makes about Jamaica may feature in an individual case on an individual application made by someone claiming that as a basis of persecution, but that matter can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, no one is asking the Minister to give a decision off the cuff, as it were, but I did ask him whether the Secretary of State would agree to refer the question of partial designation in respect of gays, in particular in the case of Jamaica, to the advisory panel. Clearly, the advisory panel had advised the Secretary of State that men should be singled out in the case of Ghana and Nigeria, but if it has not been asked to advise on gays, perhaps it is time for the Secretary of State to take its advice.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the noble Lord makes a valid point which I am sure will be relayed to the Home Secretary. Obviously, I cannot comment on what the Home Secretary's view on that might be. However, as I say, the issue can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
	The noble Lord referred to the Country of Origin Information Service website. I believe that the point he made in that regard is not correct as I have the relevant print-out to hand.
	We believe that the Nigeria report is on that website. If the noble Lord has had difficulty accessing it, I apologise, but I am happy to pass this to him. I think it indicates that he may well be wrong on that point.
	I am grateful to the noble Lord for all of his questions and points, and apologise if I have not answered them all precisely. I have done my best in the time that I have, and we are happy to provide other details which the noble Lord feels may be missing. As I said earlier, we will happily share those with other of your Lordships who have an interest, and place a copy in the Library of the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Retention of Communications Data (Further Extension of Initial Period) Order 2005

(Further Extension of Initial Period) Order 2005

Lord Bassam of Brighton: rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 3 November be approved [8th Report from the Joint Committee].

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, this order is made under Sections 105(3) and 105(5) of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001—a measure made in response to a new threat from terrorism witnessed on 11 September 2001. Four years later, as we know, that threat was realised here in the streets of London on 7 July.
	The purpose of the order is to extend, for a further two years, the initial period within which the Secretary of State may, by order, authorise the giving of directions to require communications service providers to retain communications data. The initial period has been extended by Parliament once previously, in December 2003, but that extended period will end on 13 December this year. I want to explain why the Government believe that an order for a further extension is necessary.
	Communications data—that is, data about communications and how they are made, but not what was said or written—remains a vital investigative tool. It provides evidence of associations between individuals and events in time and place. It also provides evidence of innocence. Without data of this sort being available, one of the suspects for the attempted terror attack on London on 21 July may well have evaded arrest in Rome. It is also likely that the ability of the police and the Security Service to painstakingly investigate the associations between those involved in all of the July attacks, and with those who may have directed or financed their activity, would be limited. Many individuals convicted of the most serious offences with evidence communications data might escape detection and prosecution.
	Yet, the availability of such data is not guaranteed. The effectiveness with which the police can investigate offences can depend upon which communications service provider a suspect, victim or witness has used. Service providers are required to erase data or make it anonymous once a communication is completed, unless the provider needs to retain it for a business purpose. Once the provider has no need of keeping that data it is destroyed, within days—or, sometimes, minutes—of the communication taking place. One consequence of a vibrant and competitive communications sector is a trend to reduce costs, and to retain less data or even stop retaining it at all.
	Two years ago, as well as extending that initial period, Parliament approved a voluntary code of practice under Section 103 of the 2001 Act. This enabled service providers to voluntarily and lawfully undertake to retain data in line with the code which they might otherwise have been forced to erase or anonymise. With the Act also providing for government funding, providers can choose to retain data that they might otherwise decide not to spend their money on keeping. That investment on behalf of the public can be justified if it secures the preservation of vital evidence of terrorist planning.
	At this point I would like to pay tribute to the communications service providers and their staff who have tirelessly assisted the Security Service and the police, particularly since the July bombings. They supported those investigations by responding to requirements placed upon them to make data available for lawful disclosure. The important contribution that they are making can already be seen in those trials where communications data has been vital in securing convictions—particularly in murders, threats to kill and kidnaps, where there is no doubt about the necessity and proportionality of investigating communications material.
	I also pay tribute to the co-operation of those service providers, big and small, that as part of their corporate social responsibility have engaged in constructive dialogue with the Government about retaining data in line with the voluntary code as their business models change and as technology changes. Those providers have considered which data they retain for a business purpose that they could retain for longer, if they choose to do so. They have considered appropriate technical solutions for increasing their storage capabilities and for the consequential retrieval and disclosure of data. They have identified the costs of those solutions for which they look to government to contribute, in line with the provisions of the Act.
	Although this process can be quickly summarised, it does not happen quickly. It remains a technically complex issue. With complex communications networks involved it can take months for a provider to work out how it might extend the retention of its data and ensure that data can be searched and specific data identified readily. When the initial period was previously extended the Government believed, without the benefit of practical experience acquired over two years of technical discussions with industry, that it would be possible to determine the effectiveness of the voluntary code of practice within three months. What we were able to determine in that time was willingness on the part of providers to volunteer or to consider doing so. The Government have now concluded agreements with providers to support the implementation of technical solutions initiatives that will help to ensure that data is retained and not lost. Other solutions and agreements are in various stages of preparation and negotiation.
	At the same time, the Government are in discussion with service providers that have indicated they are prepared to retain data for longer, but only if required to do so. Equally, there are providers that have undertaken to retain data voluntarily, or will be doing so, but want that agreement to be made subject to a future direction, once their technical solution is fully in place. They will be content to be directed to do what they already have undertaken to do and to derive additional legal certainty from complying with a legal obligation to retain data rather than a voluntary undertaking.
	If the possibility of giving directions is lost, there are significant providers that will disengage from dialogue with the Government, or whose willingness to find and develop technical solutions will be lost. The opportunity of preserving and enhancing the contribution that communications data makes to the investigation of terrorism and serious crimes will be lost with it. The voluntary code has provided an important building block upon which the foundations of a practical, viable and lawful scheme for the retention of communications data is being constructed. The full value of the investment of consideration and time that service providers have given, and are continuing to give, will be realised by cementing that good will with directions.
	The primary responsibility for any democratic state is to provide for the security and safety of its citizens from the threats posed by terrorism. It is right that in doing so the Government strike the right balance between the public interest and business interests, and between the need to retain data for the public good to tackle terrorism and serious crime, and the need to destroy data out of honest respect for individuals' privacy. Having said all those things and rehearsed those issues, I beg to move.
	Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 3 November be approved [8th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)

Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for explaining what is behind the application today. It has been enormously helpful. I take note that this would extend the order until December 2007.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I, too, am grateful for what the Minister said. This is an important order, and the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 under which it is made is landmark legislation in terms of the relationship between the state and the citizen. It is right that we in this place expend much time and anguished debate on every measure that potentially impinges on the liberty or privacy of the subject, as this measure certainly does. I am sure that noble Lords—all four of us—will remember the very strong debate that preceded the passing of the 2001 Act. Noble Lords will remember too—the Government will at any rate—that the sunset clause in Section 204 was forced on the Government in a Division and eventually accepted by the other place.
	It is perhaps proper to recollect that a major voice in that procedure was that of Lord Alexander, who now sadly is no longer with us. I mention him because he had a big part to play in that process. The Minister and I were heavily involved in the passage of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act—another landmark piece of legislation which seeks to protect the state and citizen against terrorism and undue criminal activity.
	I thank the Minister for a full explanation. The Explanatory Memorandum that accompanied the order was a model of its kind; it set out fully the context in which this order is being made and was helpful to those on these Benches; I am sure that I speak for the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, as well. I am content—just as she was—to concur in the passage of this order, mainly because the Government have been true to their word. I remember well at the time of the passage of the Act that they said they would make every effort to seek a voluntary arrangement with the industry. That they have done, for which I am extremely grateful, because I believe that voluntary arrangements are invariably better than those that are compulsorily placed upon anyone or any body of organisations. I hope that despite the fact that, as the Minister said, some of the companies involved would feel easier if they were forced to do what they are currently doing voluntarily, the Government will encourage the continuation of the voluntary arrangement so long as they are effective. The indications that the Minister gave this afternoon were that they are at the moment effective.
	How far are the Government having to utilise the provisions of Section 106, which allows the Secretary of State to make appropriate arrangements to pay communications providers who are voluntarily co-operating in the retention of communications data? It would be valuable to know that. I would also be grateful if the Minister could tell the House whether a communications provider who is voluntarily retaining data that it would normally have destroyed, is thereby exposing itself to the risk of civil suit on the part of any individual or entity whose data are being retained as a result of the voluntary arrangements. Because again, if—as I hope and think—the communications provider concerned is not exposing itself to liability to be sued effectively by an individual company concerned, that is another reason why one should persevere if at all possible with the current voluntary arrangements. Subject to hearing what the Minister might have to say on those two questions I am, on behalf of the Liberal Democrat Benches, content to support the passage of the order.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their contribution in this short discussion. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, for his compliments on the way the Government have conducted themselves on this matter. We do not often receive compliments and it is quite nice to receive one or two. Although it may have been an irritation to the government at the time, the way in which Lord Alexander conducted himself in those debates and brought forward his amendments made the government focus very carefully on how they subsequently managed their relations with service providers and so on. One could say that it is one of Lord Alexander's lasting legacies to us.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, knows, the voluntary code of practice was the subject of lengthy discussions between the Home Office and the Information Commissioner's office. Data are retained in line with the code and fall within paragraph 5 of Schedule 2 to the Data Protection Act 1998. Rightly, providers are entitled to rely heavily on the fact that the Secretary of State and Parliament have concluded that an extension of communications data is necessary to safeguard national security. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will be pleased to know that the Information Commissioner continues to support that position.
	The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, asked whether service providers would want to be directed. I think that they accept that, in choosing to retain data in line with the code, they are party to a decision to retain data and to any challenge about the lawfulness of the processing of data. But, if they were directed to retain data by the Government, only the Government would be challengeable, and I suppose that that is why they see a benefit in that arrangement. The legal position was explored in detail with the Information Commissioner before the voluntary code was consulted on publicly and approved by Parliament. Again, the Information Commissioner shares the view that retention of data, even under the voluntary code, complies with the Data Protection Act. We are happy to rely on that.
	The noble Lord asked one or two questions about cost. The costs will obviously be unique to each provider. One project—perhaps the largest so far—involves a major mobile phone service provider with a significant market share of roughly 20 per cent. It has undertaken to extend the network traffic data retention period from two days to provide all-round cover. There is a significant cost to that. We have to recognise that and ensure that there is proper funding. We are budgeting around £6 million annually to meet appropriate data collection, retention and associated retrieval costs. It is not a small cost. In terms of the global government budget, it is quite small, although it is large in itself and large in terms of the service provider.
	There is a funding process. The Government are making appropriate contributions to the costs incurred by providers that undertake to retain data for extended periods. In practice, those contributions are 100 per cent. That does not mean that every provider is being funded—that would be neither practical nor proportionate. The allocation and prioritisation of funding to providers is determined very much according to the provider's market share and interest to the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, whether or not the provider is providing novel, or perhaps unique, leading-edge services. The costs of any data retention must be proportionate to the value that the data may have in the investigation of serious crime and terrorism in the UK. Currently the focus is, rightly, on telephony traffic data, whether fixed, mobile or, in the future, Internet-provided.
	I think that I have probably gone as far as I can in providing information. To do more would be inappropriate and perhaps commercially sensitive. I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied with the advice that I have given.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and reiterate happiness with the passage of the instrument.

On Question, Motion agreed to.
	House adjourned at four minutes past five o'clock.
	Thursday, 24 November 2005.